I can see how you might have misunderstood. Yes, I was looking at it from the perspective of policy. Any policy designed to reduce crime is going to create some hardship for the innocent, and the question is how much enforcement-driven hardship is the public willing to tolerate in order to reduce crime-driven hardship. In a business context (as in the first article) your customers are not obliged to do business with you; in a democracy they are not obliged to vote for you.

In the West we are typically less tolerant of enforcement-driven hardship. This goes back to our Enlightenment ideals about freedom and justice, which are less strong than they once were but are still present.