I get a lot more out of diving than I would tricking a petty thief into returning a stolen chattel to me. And I do not have any evidence that confronting thieves is less risky than diving.
I suppose it's hard to get good denominator data for confronting petty thieves. However, most people are very unlikely to kill anybody, ever, and would rather die than kill somebody in self-defense. (See On Killing.) By the numbers, Torontonians are substantially less likely to be cold-blooded killers than the average person.
Now, we had a mafioso living in the apartment downstairs from us for several months, with a couple of warrants out for his arrest. Good buddy with the police who patrol our street. Real friendly guy. Name was Teddy (yes, I know that's not a Spanish name). Stole all the landlord's furniture from the apartment, even the refrigerator. I don't remember what the warrants were for, but there's a substantial chance that he was a cold-blooded killer. But if he'd been on the other side of that table, I still don't think he'd be very likely to try to maintain possession of the stolen laptop by killing you. I'm sure he'd do his best to intimidate the living fuck out of you, maybe threaten to call the police himself, but I don't think he takes violence so lightly that he would stab you with a Starbucks knife in order to keep the laptop.
