By Alison@Creekside
Doris (“Stockwell”) Day’s cheery crime shoppers’ philosophy on prisons seems to be: If you build them, they will come.
According to Shockwell Doris and JusticeMin Rob Nicholson, we’re going to need more prisons to deal with the “alarming” increase in “unreported crime” . . . that was last reported six years ago.
Well, you can see their point, can’t you? If more people aren’t reporting crimes, then unreported crimes must be going up and we’re going to need somewhere to put all the unreported criminals!
And why aren’t people reporting those crimes? Via The Jurist:
“(A Statistics Canada) analyst said the No. 1 reason given by individuals for not calling the police about a crime is that they believe it was not serious enough. Only two per cent said they feared retribution, and one per cent said they felt the police may be biased.
Statistics Canada reported in their last General Social Survey (GSS) that an estimated 34% of Canadians who are victims of crime still aren’t reporting the crime to police, including: – an estimated 88% of sexual assaults; – an estimated 69% of household thefts, and – and (sic) estimated 67% of personal property thefts.”
Kady advises Doris is basing his claims about unreported crime on the 2004 International Crime Victimization Survey.
Three years ago I had a look at that survey. Here are some of the more buckety questions in it:
Under Spousal violence: “Puts you down or calls you names to make you feel bad”
Under Stalking: “Sent you unwanted email messages”
Under Property Damage: “During the last 12 months did anyone deliberately damage or destroy any property belonging to you or anyone in your houshold, including a window or a fence?”
Put you down? Unwanted emails? Broken fences? Holy crap! Build more prisons!
Meanwhile here’s the reported 2004 Statscan crime stats from the year Doris is still bleating about. Yup, going down since 1991. And if I may be so rude as to bring up something a bit more current, like for instance this year’s: crime still going down. Deal with it, Doris.
Also at Tuesday’s presser, Doris addressed
“crimes like home invasion with aggravated assault, which has to be one of the most grievous types of crimes you can think of, people’s houses being broken into and people, in many cases, senior citizens, being grievously assaulted”
But while one senior’s home invasion is indeed one senior’s home invasion too many, you can see why the Cons, in their efforts to shore up the wrinkly vote, are not too keen to use statistics in this case either:
Statscan: Police-reported robbery in Canada, 2008
Break and enters were at their lowest level in 40 years, dropping by 9%.
In 2008, 6% of victims involved in a home invasion were 65 years or older, compared to 3% who were robbed on the street or other outdoor public location and 2% who were robbed in a commercial or institutional establishment. About 2% of victims of total violent crime in 2008 were 65 years or older.”
Yeah, screw the stats, let’s just go with feelings.
Day continues on about home invasions:
” . . . previously there were too many cases when those were addressed with what’s called conditional sentencing. That means the criminals in that case get sent home. They don’t have to go to jail.”
John Geddes at Maclean’s asked Day’s office for material supporting his statement about conditional sentences. Amusingly they sent back StatsCan data that refutes their position:
“So far, they have only passed along the broad Statistics Canada data on criminal courts, which shows that 4.4 per cent of adult criminal convictions result in conditional sentences. There’s nothing in the data that I can see, though, to shore up Day’s version of reality.”
Just another day in Day’s version of reality.
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