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Watching a gangster movie, it made me think about how differences in culture really come out with respect to crime. The following is just purely my observations and opinion. How much crime is committed I think depends on the health of a society, not culture. If a society is in good shape crime will go down and if it is in bad shape crime will be higher. What a genius you say! ...well, maybe not.

But I think the type of crime and how it is committed is heavily influenced by culture. In the West, at least today, crime seems to be of an individual or at least random nature. Some psycho terrorizes a neighborhood for a while, killing and causing mayhem, before being caught and glaring scarily into the tv cameras outside the court room. Down and out types steal and robs, maybe cooperating briefly with some other kindred souls to run an illegal business.

In more group-oriented cultures, gangsterism 黑幫 is much more common. My impression is that people are not as likely to get into trouble as individuals as much as they are to get into trouble as part of organized gangs. They are very common and are often the stuff of movies, tv series and even romances. ...even extending to such silliness as "My Wife is a Gangster" 我老婆是老大 or for the single crowd "My Girlfriend is a Gangster" 我的黑幫女友. Compare these to that Hollywood Classic "I Married an Axe Murderer," where the wife clearly has a more individual-focused hobby. Hard to say which is worse, but they do have a different flavors.