[LINK] "Safety in numbers?"

[rfmcdonald]

In MacLean's, Nicholas Köhler with Patricia Treble ask an interesting question. What is crime--not just reported crime--so much lower in Ontario and Québec than in western Canada? More stable populations, with better social programs and a more even distribution of wealth, seem to be key.

Of the largest 100 cities or regions in Canada, the 10 safest are in Quebec and Ontario, Canada’s two most populous provinces. The Ontario city with the highest crime score is Belleville, population 51,000 and ranked 15th worst (cities in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba flesh out all the positions above it). The first Quebec city to show up is Montreal, ranked 24th, despite the fact it’s the third biggest city in Canada. Toronto is a sleepy 57th, while Peel, York and Halton regions—Toronto’s populous, sprawling suburban ring—have among the lowest crime scores in the country. So what gives?

Criminologists are divided on the question of why Central Canada sees the least amount of crime—and in particular violent crime—and why police-reported crime rates climb as you head west. One popular theory focuses on where crimes are more likely to be reported—for example, that western Canadians “have a tendency to be more law-and-order, and so therefore report more crimes,” as Mount Royal University criminologist Doug King puts it.

King, based in Calgary, doesn’t actually buy into that theory—he thinks the West’s demographics and tightly packed but isolated cities can tell the whole story. But Irvin Waller, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa, points out that reporting levels in Ontario and Quebec have been dropping for years. According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics figures for 2004, the most recent published data available, just 30 per cent of all victimization incidents get reported to police in Ontario, the lowest in Canada (Waller says victims of sexual assault are the least likely to contact police). And most victims who report crimes do so not because they think police can help, but as part of an insurance claim.

So maybe Ontario isn’t all that safe after all. Quebec, however, has the highest reporting in Canada, at 40 per cent. Waller speculates the difference has much to do with the victim services programs available in Quebec and largely absent in Ontario, where, he says, compensation amounts are smaller, there are fewer applicants, and “we have a bill of rights for victims that is worth absolutely nothing.”

[. . .]

Yet even if Ontarians reported more crime, that wouldn’t erase the gap between Central Canada and the West. Why? Tanya Trussler, a sociologist at Mount Royal University, says that Quebec and Ontario are more broadly middle class than the West, where a wider income gap helps fuel crime. Still, if experts believe Ontario only seems safer, its eastern neighbour actually boasts many of the safest communities in Canada. It has an older, more law-abiding citizenry, and receives fewer migrants than, say, Alberta, which contributes to a more commonly held view of what’s socially acceptable.

Laissez-faire doesn't work, not in this domain, at least.