Highlights
Per big city crime dashboards, why is violence in the US decreasing (or essentially flat per one analysis) but increasing for most categories in Canada?
“Violent crime in Canada is now at levels unseen since 2007.”
There are endless similarities between US and Canadian cities and law enforcement. Decreasing violence here and increasing violence there just doesn’t make sense.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Quotes
All quotes are edited for brevity.
Editor’s Note
The US Department of Justice just released the results of the National Crime Victimization Survey showing significant increases in violent crime in the US for 2022. For an overview of the survey compared to crimes reported to law enforcement (what’s below) see, US Violence Is Both Increasing And Decreasing? Who’s Right?
What’s below focuses on crimes reported to law enforcement. Approximately 42 percent of violent crimes are reported. It’s much less for property crime.
Article
What in the name of Maple trees is happening to Canadian cities and growing violence? Canada has always had a reputation for being a safe country with moderate crime cities.
In the United States, Jeff Asher’s list of crime increases and decreases for cities and two other sources all agree that homicides are decreasing in 2023. Shootings are down. Overall violent crime is either decreasing or essentially flat (down a bit) depending on the source you use. Auto theft is increasing considerably. Burglaries are down but nonresidential burglaries have increased.
The Major Cities Chiefs Association
The list of American cities for the first six months of 2023 is as follows:
The list of Canadian cities for the first six months of 2023 is as follows:
“Rampant Crime Is Threatening Canada’s Urban Vibrancy” The National Post
However, according to Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index, which measures police-reported crime, violent crime is soaring. The total number of violent incidents reported in 2022 was 39 percent higher than in 2015. These gains have largely reversed reductions achieved throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s — violent crime is now at levels unseen since 2007.
These already-concerning numbers almost certainly underestimate the growing problem. Crime statistics are necessarily limited to police-reported incidents, which, of course, excludes a large body of unreported crime. Public institutions make some effort to track what percentage of crime goes unreported, but these efforts are only cursory. In 2011, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute published a lengthy report showing that Canadian crime statistics are often structured in a manner that minimizes actual crime, both by downplaying reported crime and failing to adequately explore unreported crime.
How Can Violent Crime Decrease in US Cities But Increase in Canada?
There seems to be little doubt that homicides have decreased considerably in the US. Overall violence (based on crimes reported to law enforcement) in the US has either decreased or is essentially flat in 2023, depending on the source used, again, based on big city crime dashboards.
In Canada, however, according to the Major City Chiefs Association (chart above) homicides have decreased slightly while all other forms of violence (rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults) have increased.
If you’re wondering how the Canadian city statistics rank against American cities, you can do so below and here.
The list of Canadian cities includes:
As to numbers, Canadian cities seem to have lower counts than some of their counterparts in the US but a comprehensive overview would require population counts as well as measures of other social indicators like poverty or the percentage of the population most criminogenic (i.e., 18-35 years of age).
But in Toronto, there are seven million people with 3,165 reported violent crimes for the first six months of 2023, only exceeded by eight American cities out of 42 in Jeff Asher’s list.
Conclusions
There are numerous articles in the US (including mine) discussing reductions in homicides and overall violence for the first six months of 2023 based on big-city crime dashboards.
Some critics suggest that it proves that reduced police staffing levels have little to no impact or that criminal justice reform initiatives are lessening violence in the US. However Canadian police staffing levels have similar problems. Criminal justice reform in Canada is very active. Yet “The total number of violent incidents reported in 2022 was 39 percent higher than in 2015.”
What people need to understand is that, according to the Major City Chiefs Association, homicides in the US were up 50 percent and aggravated assaults were up 36 percent since 2019. With growth like that, a regression to the mean (average) was inevitable. Nothing as relatively rare as homicides and some forms of violence go up (or down) forever.
But we also have issues like crime reporting acknowledging that the majority of violent and property crime is underreported in the US for a variety of reasons. Jeff Asher documents that the wait times for a police response (i.e., New Orleans) because of understaffing may be having an impact on crime reporting. It seems plausible that this is happening in other American cities.
Some suggest that police-community relations have taken a hit over the use of force issues in the US thus inducing a measure of mistrust that could possibly affect crime reporting.
Note that many forms of violence in the US involve someone known to the victim. Violent victimizations committed by strangers accounted for about 38% of all nonfatal violence. There is a general reluctance to report violent acts to law enforcement if they involve someone the victim knows.
All of this needs to be considered when discussing decreases in violence. Homicide counts in the US or Canada, however, are not subject to the caveats discussed above.
Yet the furor over violence and other forms of crime in the US seems unrelenting with record fear of crime and crime being a major issue during the last election. If you ask the average American about their perceptions of safety, many would suggest that their cities are unsafe.
In a poll by the Pew Research Center, violent crime ranked as the third most important issue for registered voters in the congressional election, with 60% of the vote, tying with health care and trailing only the economy (77%) and gun policy (62%), USA Today.
But when you take the increase in most forms of violence in Canada into consideration, some may suggest that the crime data coming from the US as to reported violence doesn’t make sense. Throughout criminology, crime has “mostly” increased or decreased collectively for most Western industrialized countries over time.
Thus, if violence (based on crimes reported to law enforcement) is decreasing in the US in 3023, it should be the same for Canadian cities.
Beyond a regression to the mean (average) in the US, there’s something about US crime data when compared to Canadian crime statistics that doesn’t make sense.
Note that there is new data from the US Department of Justice stating that violence increased considerably in 2022.
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