Great article from Whitehorse

Think crime has exploded? Look again - The Whitehorse Daily Star

The Whitehorse Daily Star
Tue Oct 20 2009
Page: 6


Source: Sun Media Corp.

OTTAWA - Ordinary folk listening to federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson railing at critics of the latest Conservative ad-ready crime legislation might be excused for thinking the country is being overrun by killers and crooks.

Once again, at the risk of letting facts get in the way of political propaganda, we offer a sample of common misperceptions of crime and punishment in Canada (as reflected in our daily mail), and
some interesting statistics supplied by Nicholson's own government.

Claim: Something urgently needs to be done to deal with soaring rates of both violent and property crimes.

Fact: Something always needs to be done to thwart crime, but the reality is our streets are safer today than 20 years ago.Violent crime has been generally dropping for years, and was lower
in 2007 than at any time in two decades. Ditto for property crimes -the recent rate is more than 40 per cent below a peak in 1991.

Claim: The criminal population is made up of mainly of murderers, rapists and drug dealers.

Fact: While those groups of criminals are the ones most people naturally worry about, the most common charges of all - about 24 per cent of the criminal court traffic - are for breach of court orders and probation conditions. Those are followed by impaired driving (8.9 per cent); common
assault (7.9 per cent); and theft (7.5 per cent). Charges for drug trafficking represented about 2.5 per cent of the total last year; sex offences just over one per cent; and homicide barely 0.04 per cent of the total.

Claim: The majority of crimes is being committed by blacks, Asians and Muslims.

Fact: The vast majority of the federal prison population - 67.5 per cent - is white Caucasian, and 60 per cent are either Catholic or Protestant. Blacks represent about six per cent, and Muslims half that number.

Claim: The streets are particularly unsafe for Canada's seniors, who are being targeted by violent criminals.

Fact: One crime against a senior is too many. That said, almost 55 per cent of all victims of violent crimes reported in 2007 were under the age of 30, an age group that represents just over a third of the Canadian population. By comparison, seniors over 65 account for about 14 per cent of the population, but represented only 1.9 per cent of all victims of violent crime.

Claim: Ontario and Quebec are the country's cesspools of crime.

Fact: Crime rates are highest in the West and the North. Ontario has the lowest, followed by Quebec. That trend has remained generally unchanged over many years.

Claim: Canada needs to throw more criminals in prison longer.

Fact: The rate of people being locked up in this country is higher than most European countries, and slightly below Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. is in a league of its own - several times higher than Canada - although its love of incarceration is not reflected in lower crime rates.
It may also be worth mentioning that 11 per cent of the entire federal prison population today were certified mental patients at the time they were tossed in the slammer. Finally, here's a little something for Canadian taxpayers to chew on. The average annual cost of keeping a federal inmate behind bars last year was $93,030. There are currently 13,581 inmates costing more than $1 billion.