Stockwell Day, crime shopper

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 them 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 us that 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?"

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

Meanwhile back in the real world, 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 report : crime still going down.

Deal with it, Doris.

And in other 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 crimes to police.

Yeah. Sure. That must be it.
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.

Compared to last year there were 17,000 fewer motor vehicle thefts, 10,000 fewer mischief offences and 5,000 fewer break-ins. Drug offences, serious assault, sexual assault and robbery are all down.

Nonetheless, the websites of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the Chair of the Justice Committee Ed Fast currently both state :

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

... which as it happens is an exact quote lifted from Harper's Throne Speech from back in April 2006.

.
The Public Safety Minister and the Chair of the Justice Committee will surely be updating their websites any time now, but in the meantime here is a bit of advice from the Corrections Canada website, unfortunately long since expunged in one of those gc.ca website 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."