Doris' war on crime stats

Doris' cheery crime shoppers philosophy on prisons seems to be : If you build them, they will come

According to Shockwell Doris and JusticeMin Rob Nicholson yesterday, we're going to need more prisons to deal with the "alarming" increase in "unreported crime" ... that was last reported six years ago.

Well, you can see their point, can't you? If more people aren't reporting crimes, then unreported crimes must be going up and we're going to need somewhere to put all the unreported criminals!

And why aren't people reporting those crimes? Via The Jurist :

"(A Statistics Canada) analyst said the No. 1 reason given by individuals for not calling the police about a crime is that they believe it was not serious enough. Only two per cent said they feared retribution, and one per cent said they felt the police may be biased.

Statistics Canada reported in their last General Social Survey (GSS) that an estimated 34% of Canadians who are victims of crime still aren't reporting the crime to police, including: - an estimated 88% of sexual assaults; - an estimated 69% of household thefts, and - and (sic) estimated 67% of personal property thefts."

Kady advises Doris is basing his claims about unreported crime on the 2004 International Crime Victimization Survey.

Three years ago I had a look at that survey. Here are some of the more buckety questions in it :

Under Spousal violence : "Puts you down or calls you names to make you feel bad"

Under Stalking : "Sent you unwanted email messages"

Under Property Damage : "During the last 12 months did anyone deliberately damage or destroy any property belonging to you or anyone in your houshold, including a window or a fence?"

Put you down? Unwanted emails? Broken fences? Holy crap! Build more prisons!

Meanwhile here's the reported 2004 Statscan crime stats from the year Doris is still bleating about. Yup, going down since 1991. And if I may be so rude as to bring up something a bit more current, like for instance this year's : crime still going down. Deal with it, Doris.

.

And in the news, crime is down again

From StatsCan today : The numbers, rates and severity of crimes reported to police dropped again last year, continuing a 10-year trend. StatsCan Tables here.

Aha! say the Harperclones, that's because people aren't reporting the crimes. Yeah. Sure.

The crime rate, a measure of the volume of crime reported to police, fell 3% in 2009 and was 17% lower than a decade ago.
The Crime Severity Index (CSI), a measure of the seriousness of police-reported crime, declined 4% in 2009 and stood 22% lower than in 1999.

Violent crimes, which range in seriousness from harassing phone calls to homicide, accounted for about 1 in 5 crimes in 2009. Police-reported violent crime in Canada is also declining, but to a lesser extent than overall crime.

Police identified about 165,000 youth aged 12 to 17 accused of a criminal offence in 2009. Both the number of crimes and the seriousness of crimes committed by youth have generally been declining since 2001, including a slight drop in 2009.

From Public Safety Minister Vic Toews website :

"Unfortunately, our safe streets and healthy communities are increasingly under threat of gun, gang and drug violence."

an exact quote lifted in its entirety from Harper's April 2006 Speech From the Throne

... and repeated yet again on the website of Con Ed Fast, Chair of the Justice Committee no less.

.

StatsCan better be careful ...

.

The war on crime stats

"The Vancouver Board of Trade today called on Opposition Leader Stéphane Dion to deal with Canada’s increasing crime problem currently hidden by inaccurate statistics." ~ VBT media release

Director Jason McLean stated that current StatsCan statistics showing an overall drop in crime in Canada are inaccurate due to StatsCan's own admission that crime is under-reported by a third.
McLean referred Dion to the board's own Crime Task Force and the more serious crime picture contained in StasCan's Criminal Victimization Surveys which show one in four people were affected by criminal offenses in 2004.

"The Board’s Crime Task Force has revealed that Canada has some of the highest crime rates of all OECD countries. In fact, much of violent crime is getting worse. This year alone, one in ten Canadians will be a victim of violent crime," McLean said."

Holy crap! One in four? One in ten? How'd you figure that?

A look at those Criminal Victimization Surveys and the questions in it gives us a clue.
Good for them for including spousal violence. Really.
But : "Puts you down or calls you names to make you feel bad"?
And under Stalking : "Sent you unwanted email messages"?
How about "During the last 12 months did anyone deliberately damage or destroy any property belonging to you or anyone in your houshold, including a window or a fence?"

What? Nothing about being jostled on the bus?

Look, guys. Get a grip.

Unwanted emails and broken fences are not what we mean by violent crime.

Here's the StatsCan crime stats for 2004.
Crime going down. Deal with it.

Oh and that one-third under-reporting of crimes?
Unless people suddenly started under-reporting crimes just recently, that one-third would apply to all years, wouldn't it? Crime would be one-third higher in all years but it would still be going down.

So spare us that old Toews hysteria you're peddling about Canada being "worse than the U.S., where the violent crime rate has dropped significantly since 1999" and your recommendation that we should therefore adopt "American tough-on-crime policies".

Here's a piece of advice for all you VBTers and your Con enablers from Corrections Canada. It was on a page since expunged in one of those gnugov page purges.

"American politicians have often found it in their self-interest to use fear of crime as a strategy to win elections, by promising to wage war on crime.
It is ironic that in the United States, as in Canada, crime rates have been declining since 1991. However, by waging war on crime they have managed to double their prison population without making the United States a noticeably safer society than Canada.
We would do much to advance the public interest if we can better manage the fear of crime than our American neighbours."

Twas brillig, but for slithy Toews

Further to yesterday's post below in which Justice Minister Vic Toews is quoted as saying :
"I don't think that anyone can seriously say that our streets today are as safe as they were 20 years ago",
here's some more research from the Ministry of Justice, the place where, you know, he works now.

Worse than 20 years ago? Not so much.
There are certainly some horrendous local disparities on the ground to be addressed:

but nothing to suggest a reason why most of Canada shouldn't continue on with whatever it is they are obviously already doing right.
And while we're at it, perhaps Mr. Toews can find time within his busy Jabberwocky Crimestoppers Tour to address this one :



Callooh! Callay! and a frabjous day to Dave at Galloping Beaver for the link.
More on this from The Woodshed, Jacob's Super Patented Brain Thoughts, and A BCer in Toronto

Toews Town Hall

From CTV :

"On Wednesday night in Calgary, Justice Minister Vic Toews insisted all questions be screened in advance during a town hall discussion on the government's get-tough-on-crime bill."

Well how terribly Bush of you! And at a "town hall" too.

OK, what have you got?

From CBC :
"Federal Justice Minister Vic Toews outlined the Harper government's justice initiatives Wednesday night at a town hall meeting in Calgary.
"I don't think that anyone can seriously say that our streets today are as safe as they were 20 years ago," Toews told about 150 people at the meeting in the riding of Calgary West."

Really? How about compared to 10 years ago?
That would certainly qualify as a trend, wouldn't it?

From Statistics Canada :

OK, so we can seriously say that our streets are safer than they were 10 years ago.
Next.

"Toews concedes the government has estimated its prison budget might increase by up to $300 million, but he says it's worth the cost."

Even Bushier!
While looking for statistics on violent crime, I ran into this page from the Corrections Service of Canada, dated Sept 2000. There's a lot of interesting data there but their conclusion seems particularly pertinent here :

"American politicians have often found it in their self-interest to use fear of crime as a strategy to win elections, by promising to wage war on crime.
It is ironic that in the United States, as in Canada, crime rates have been declining since 1991. However, by waging war on crime they have managed to double their prison population without making the United States a noticeably safer society than Canada. We would do much to advance the public interest if we can better manage the fear of crime than our American neighbours."

No comment.