A safer Canada: Stats show most forms of crime in decline

If you're one of those people who worries society is devolving into a lawless, dystopian cesspool, take some comfort in Statistics Canada's latest crime report.

The crime rate last year continue its two-decade decline. And, perhaps more significantly, the measurement StatsCan uses to track the severity of crime also dropped.

Police-reported crime for the most common types of violent and property offences
was down eight per cent over 2012, dropping 30 per cent since 2003. The Crime Severity Index (CSI) declined by nine per cent nationally year over year.

"With the exception of Yukon [up six per cent] and Newfoundland and Labrador [up one per cent], declines in the volume and severity of police-reported crime were reported across all provinces and territories, as well as in virtually all census metropolitan areas," the report says.

The continuing drop in the CSI is important because it weights the data based on the seriousness of the crime.

“I would say this metric is more informative and more sensitive," Leonid Shafir, StatsCan's data production and dissemination officer, told Yahoo Canada News. "Informative because it captures not only crime levels but also crime composition by severity, and sensitive because it’s severity based.”

The CSI not only provides a snapshot of overall crime in a given area, he said, "but also clearly tells you which jurisdiction has the highest number of severe violent crimes per 100,000 population.”

The Canadian CSI last year was 68.7, with a national crime rate of 5,190 reported incidents per 100,000 people.

All major urban centres saw a CSI drop except Edmonton, which remained flat. Canada's highest crime rates are in Regina. The city tops the CSI rankings at 109.3, down seven per cent from 2012, with a crime rate of 8,069. Saskatoon is second highest at 99.1 and 7,958, both figures lower than the previous year.

[ Related: Crime rates down in Saskatoon, still second highest in Canada ]

Toronto, by contrast has a CSI of 47.1 and crime rate of 2,941, almost half of Vancouver's CSI of 90.3, with a rate of 6,897. Winnipeg saw a sharp CSI drop of 15 per cent to 83.1, with a 15 per cent drop in its overall crime rate, to 5,368.

A sharp drop in the number of robberies, along with fewer homicides and attempted murders, helped drive down the violent-crime figures, while decreases in breaking and entering, theft under $5,000 and mischief further pushed down the CSI.

The figures are not particularly surprising, said Neil Boyd, director of Simon Fraser University's School of Criminology.

“It continues a trend that we’ve seen over the past 15 to 20 years in terms of reductions in crime but also in crime severity," he said.

There's no single reason for the drop in crime, which peaked in the late 1980s before beginning a steep and fairly steady decline. Many have pointed to the aging of the baby-boomer generation – people tend to get up to less trouble as they get older.

[ Related: Gun crime has fallen sharply in last few years, new StatsCan figures show ]

Crime rates began rising in the early 1960s as boomers came of age, also coinciding with major cultural upheaval. But experts differ on how important the demographic shift is, Boyd said in an interview.

"What I would say is that it’s not the only factor but it’s a significant factor," he said.

Deep changes in society may be more important, he said. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, that we've changed as a culture, evolving more rights for women, children, homosexuals and even animals.

“All of those revolutions in culture and thought about how we treat animals, how we treat children, are all about rejecting violence as a way of resolving social problems, as a way of controlling people," said Boyd.

Pinker himself said via email the Canadian statistics reflect a trend to declining violence across most developed countries since the early 1990s, and an even longer trend going back centuries.

"The recent crime decline can't be blamed on the usual suspects - – [a drop in] inequality and unemployment – since inequality has risen in the past two decades, and unemployment in the past half-decade," Pinker said.

"Nor is it a demographic effect. Smarter policing is one cause, and perhaps also an ill-defined cultural change, pushing back against the 1960s, that values self-control, responsibility, and nonviolence.

"The truth is that no one completely understands the recent decline."

One troubling aspect of the report was a rise in sexual violations against children, anything from luring a child via a computer, child porn to sexual interference. They're up six per cent over 2012, which runs counter to the general trend.

StatsCan doesn't explain the increase in a crime that's generally thought to be under-reported. But Boyd said it's likely improved technology and a greater awareness are factors.

"Police officers now have the ability to track online offenders, people who are going after children online," he said. "We live in a virtual world and the technology of detection has improved.”

Police are prepared to take some of the credit. Government and police commitment to crime-prevention strategies are helping drive down crime rates, said Richard Philbin, acting provincial commander of the Ontario Provincial Police.

There are still problem areas, said Boyd, notably violence among gangsters, the homeless and mentally ill living on the streets and the aboriginal community.

“They tend to clog up a lot of police time and our correctional centres as well," he said.

"The character of people who are processed through the criminal justice system has changed as well. We know, for example, that domestic violence has decreased quite markedly.”

Philbin, speaking on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said social factors do play a role. For instance, there's far less tolerance of impaired driving today than when he began his career 27 years ago.

Society has an important role in addressing lagging areas, he said. It's not strictly up to police to deal with roots of homelessness or things that push young men into gangs.

"That’s why we have to focus on community mobilization with regard to crime-prevention strategies," said Philbin.

[ Related: A closer look at falling crime statistics ]

Politicians could use the StatsCan figures as ammunition to argue against boosting police budgets but Boyd said policing costs are in part driven by what happens on the back end of a crime incident.

"We also think we need to look at another side to that picture, which is that the preparation for cases for court, given the Charter and other developments, has become much more time-consuming, much more difficult than it used to be," he said.

Police face a higher evidentiary burden to prove their cases and the Charter of Rights has strengthened protections for the accused, he explained. That increases officers' workloads, which carries a price tag.

Philbin also noted officers now take more time to support crime victims.

“That’s more than handing them a card with phone numbers for victim’s assistance," he said.

And, said Philbin, for the OPP, less than a third of police calls involves responses to crimes.

“Seventy percent of our activity is dealing with social disorder over and above crime calls," he said, anything from a bear sighting to someone complaining about their neighbour.

"That in itself is a startling statistic. There’s a lot more that we have to respond to because we’re the ones that are answering the phones 24/7.”

Couldn't someone other than a highly-paid, armed officer handle those calls?

“That’s what political leaders across this province and across this country are currently looking at," he said.