Serious Crime Drops in Canada in 2007
Statistics Canada Says the Felony Rate Lower than 1970s
Mar 30, 2009
Based on data reported by police, Statistics Canada says crime “declined for the third consecutive year in 2007, continuing the downward trend in police-reported crime since the rate peaked in 1991.”
The agency says the seven percent drop “was driven mainly by decreases in counterfeiting and high-volume property offenses such as theft $5,000 and under, break-ins, and motor vehicle thefts.”
Serious violent offenses such as homicides, attempted murders, sexual assaults, and robberies were also down in 2007 compared with 2006.
And, according to Statistics Canada, “Police-reported crime rates were down in all provinces and territories, except Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon.”
Public Believes Crime Levels are Rising
Writing in the Toronto Star, Kathy English reported on July 28, 2008 that 36% of the people in the Greater Toronto Area said they felt less safe than they did a year earlier. That disconnect between reality and perception can be traced to the way media reports crime.
When a major crime occurs there is blanket coverage. A 13-year-old kills her family in Lethbridge, Alberta and the satellite trucks pull into the parking lot of the court house to beam out coverage of the trial. Eight members of a motorcycle gang are murdered in rural Ontario and the helicopters are in the air getting photos of the grisly scene.
Sensational crimes attract the attention of the public and news editors know this. There’s an old saying in newsrooms “If it bleeds it leads.” And, Mitchell Stephens made the same point in his 1996 book “A History of News” when he wrote that, “Crime news is prime news.” So, major crime gets front-page treatment.
Little wonder then, that public perception is skewed. While crime rates are steadily declining, almost half of Canada’s population believes it’s actually increasing. A 2007 Ipsos Reid opinion poll carried out for the CanWest News Service found only 12 percent of Canadians thought crime rates were declining; 46 percent thought the amount of crime was going up.
Misperception also Fueled by Politicians
Of course, politicians have been quick to exploit the public’s fear of becoming victims of crime. In April 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a speech in Winnipeg. In part, here’s what he said:
“Canada is a great country, and one of the things that has made Canada a great country has been our traditionally low crime rates…Times, however, are changing…Our communities are changing…And, the safe streets and safe neighbourhoods that Canadians have come to expect as being part of our way of life are being threatened by rising levels of gun, gang, and drug crime…
“And let me be clear, our government has absolutely no intention of standing by and allowing this plague of violent, organized crime to grow unchecked.”
He went on to announce Ottawa’s get-tough-on-crime plans. These include about a dozen crime bills to bring in harsher gun sentences and to make it more difficult to get bail. The Conservative government has kept up its unrelenting campaign against the country's criminals. The latest attack is on the practice of judges crediting the accused with two days served for every day they have been held in pre-trial custody.
Crime Coverage will not Improve
As the economic recession bites deeper the pain is being felt in newsrooms everywhere. Fewer journalists on the prowl for stories will mean more crime coverage. That’s because it’s cheap and easy to gather crime news simply by staking out the police station and the law courts.
And, viewers, listeners, and readers like crime stories. It feeds a fascination with the baser examples of human behaviour.
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