I fully agree that the statistics are down but the number and per capita ratios of crime are up.
As far as I understand only Nunavut and the other territories have their per capita up.
Everyone else is down.
Tories judge evidence of falling rates inadmissible
As we have seen many times before, evidence doesn’t count when it comes to the Harper government and crime policy. Emotion apparently does.
Yet again, Statistics Canada reports that crime rates continue to fall across almost all categories of crime. And yet again, the government persists in proceeding with sledgehammer anti-crime policies that are costly, have been tried and abandoned in the United States, and, in some cases, will be counterproductive.
The average citizen, especially those who favour the Conservative Party, is told by political leaders that crime is on the rise, and needs to be fought with a bevy of harsh new measures. Then they watch the television news, where “if it bleeds, it leads” dominates local coverage. Then they turn to the tabloid press, or tabloid elements in the so-called serious newspapers, to read endless stories about crime. No wonder some people believe a crime wave is washing over Canada.
This week, Statscan told us that, happily, Canada’s overall crime rate is now the lowest since 1973, and the homicide rate the lowest since 1966. The agency began what it calls a “severity of crime” index in 1996. This year’s rate is the lowest since the index began. There were fewer attempted murders, serious assaults, robberies, car thefts, break-ins and petty thefts than the year before. Only a few crime categories, including drug offences, were up. But about half of these drug offences were for marijuana, hardly the stuff of grave peril to the established order.
These findings don’t matter for the Conservatives. They’re convinced that, for their supporters, the perception exists that crime is rising, or at least is being fought with inadequate measures. Crime is a hot-button issue for the faithful, and one that can be conveniently pushed when the party needs to raise money – because, don’t forget, the other parties are “soft on crime.”
So we’ll have more prisons (the costs of which will be higher than the government suggests) and worse conditions in existing prisons, longer sentences for certain crimes, a weakening of legal protections for juvenile offenders, less rehabilitation and more old-fashioned punishment. And we’ll close down a widely hailed prison farm near Kingston that taught prisoners the discipline of work. Once again, the evidence didn’t matter.
Tories judge evidence of falling rates inadmissible - The Globe and Mail
