Police "economics"? A different dream for my country

Police mobilizing for Toronto's G20 summit in 2010 - photo Jeff Denberg Creative Commons

GUEST BLOG: Tarah Hodgkinson is a senior researcher in the Integrated Risk Assessment Instrument Research Group in Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of the International CPTED Association and a certified SafeGrowth instructor. She is completing her Ph.D in criminology at Simon Fraser University.
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I dream of Canada as a country that significantly funds incredible local crime prevention programs like SafeGrowth that engage the community and police as partners. Programs that put our neighbourhoods in charge. I want a country that encourages our universities and communities to use what we already know about crime prevention and policing by putting it into practice.

A few weeks ago I attended Public Safety Canada’s Economics of Policing and Community Safety conference in Ottawa. The conference started three years ago to respond to increasing policing costs in a time of fiscal constraint.

However instead of frontline workers talking about innovation and partnerships with their neighbourhoods, or practitioners sharing tales of their work in crime prevention, the conference room was full of senior police and policy people.  Where were the people driving change currently?

2015 Economics of Policing Conference in Ottawa, Canada's capital

The final conference discussions came down to future research and plans of action. However research questions focused on building a national framework and studying efficiency and effectiveness. Despite several calls for it, action was lacking.

Consider the vast amount of research on how such measures are useless because it is almost impossible to define efficiency and effectiveness without reducing them to response times and crime rates! Consider there has already been inconclusive police research about those very questions! Consider that a national research project is addressing this question already!

A different future unfolding elsewhere

Why not discuss how to expand successful, and proven, local crime prevention and neighbourhood safety strategies in Canada such as SafeGrowth? Why not discuss more innovative ways that the police can support and collaborate with neighbourhood-led change? Or better yet, use those limited research dollars to implement and evaluate these strategies?

I asked in frustration: “How can we talk about a national framework for Canada when we have a tiered policing system that ignores the size and role of private security and local non-police led crime prevention? How can we spend money on ANOTHER study on measuring effectiveness and efficiency?”

“How can we not do something in our neighbouhoods NOW?”

My questions may fall on deaf ears. But maybe that doesn't matter because here’s the more important question: Perhaps a different future must unfold elsewhere?

Medical magic to cut murders?

Awhile back I wrote about the murder rate gap between BC and Washington State and listed a few theories to explain it: An aging crime-prone demographic; handgun availability.

There was one theory I missed or, rather, ignored.

The Wall Street Journal, however, didn't: "In medical triumph, homicides fall despite soaring gun violence". Murder is down, says WSJ, due to a buffet of medical morsels; better medicine, quicker paramedic responses, the spread of trauma centers.

WSJ spares no marvel in the new buffet: doctoring skills brought back from the Afghan and Iraq wars; helicopters to ferry patients to emergency wards.

A week ago CBC Ottawa joined the chorus.

Apparently, says CBC Ottawa, murders are declining even though gun violence is up. For proof just look at jumps in attempted murder rates (I did). Those are the victims saved in the emergency wards by better medicine!

As Star Trek engineer Mr. Scott says in another fantasy show, "It's a fine bit of reasoning, indeed!"

Except it's wrong. The numbers don't add up to support the medical theory.

Statistics Canada rates for murder and attempted murder follow similar paths. The theory suggests they shouldn't. Look at the patterns.

Source: Statistics Canada

There might be something valid in 1975 when the rates crossed paths (but not accounted for in this theory about "recent" medical improvements). Afterwards, as one dips so does the other.

If the medical theory was right the gap between murder and attempts should widen. It doesn't. In fact the gap actually narrows since the late 1990s. Is medicine cutting those murders but having no impact on attempts? Only if police are not recording attempted murder victims, perhaps hiding them somewhere else in the stats? That's unlikely and the data do not support it.

I crunched the Ottawa crime stats to look a bit closer. Again, the data tell another story. Check out the chart.

Ottawa murder and attempts decline together

As murder drops so do attempts. Murders ebb but attempts don't flow as the theory predicts. There is something very rotten in the medical buffet. As the UNC School of Government blog concludes; "Medical progress, probably. Medical triumph, I doubt."

Medicine has improved. Better doctors and technology is incredible. That's good news. As well, we have methods to cut crime; SafeGrowth, CPTED, Ceasefire, problem-oriented policing, neighborhood reinvestment. That's good news too. But confusing matters with unproven theories is neither scientific nor helpful.

When will reporters and their editors start chasing facts and stop chasing slick headlines?  No wonder the public is so ill-informed about policing, crime and its prevention.

Canada, tough on crime? Strange things done in the midnight sun...

Night-time at Canada's Parliament Hill, Ottawa

Inside the neighborhood. That's where crime is prevented and community is built. That's why federal politics rarely appear here. Today, briefly, Leroy changed my mind.

Leroy Smickle is a 30-year old Toronto father with no criminal record. In 2009 he was at his cousin's apartment and, discovering a loaded handgun, hatched a bone-headed idea. Holding the gun in one hand and a laptop computer in the other, he began snapping pictures of himself wearing sunglasses and boxer shorts. Apparently, to the infantile, this looks cool.

At that very moment [I'm not making this up....honest] a police tactical squad busted down the door to arrest Smickle's cousin on another matter. And there was Smickle, in flagrante delicto, gun in hand, sunglasses, laptop clicking away, boxer shorts, well… you get the picture. Talk about a bad visual. Talk about bad luck!

Fast forward. After 7 months of pre-trial incarceration, Smickle came in front of Judge Anne Molloy. Mandatory sentencing rules required her to send Smickle to another 3 years in prison. Three years, no record, for a bone-headed stunt.

Instead she gave him 5 months in-house arrest and called the mandatory sentencing "outrageous".

CANADA'S NEW TOUGH-ON-CRIME LAW

In truth, except for a new law just passed in Ottawa, the Smickle caper is little more than tabloid fodder. But today that changed. Canada's federal conservative government voted sweeping tough-on-crime legislation into law (mandatory sentences, more prison-building, etc).

I've criticized BC courts for leniency in prior blogs. Mandatory sentencing would seem the answer. In fact, the BC Premier (and other western Premiers) supports the new law. But mandatory sentencing rarely works and more prisons just fill up. Ontario and Quebec oppose the law.

What about the public? A recent non-scientific poll found 86% wanted more prevention. Only 8% wanted more punishments.

Restorative justice advocates call it a step backwards. Canadian criminologists feel the same.

Even justice officials in Texas, the most conservative of all States, say the new Canadian law won't work. They've tried and it failed. In fact they are repealing their mandatory sentences in favor of drug treatment and community supervision.

With apologies to great Canadian poet Robert Service, there truly are strange things done in the midnight sun. I fear there are dark days ahead in the Canadian justice system.

Canadian criminologist Evelyn Zellerer describes restorative justice as one alternative to new Canadian law