Scott Newark Misleads Canadians about Crime

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

Who is Scott Newark? “Scott Newark is a former Alberta Crown prosecutor and executive officer of the Canadian Police Association. He is the author of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s recent study Why Canadian Crime Statistics Don’t Add Up: Not The Whole Truth.” (from the National Post). 

Scott Newark gives voice to a selective reading and presentation of crime data which includes, among other things, that crime rates are far more onerous than what Statistics Canada measures in their victimization studies.

Aside from a selective use of information, Newark uses alarmist language to frighten and mislead readers in his public writings. Here’s a sample of his manipulation of crime information:

Newark: “Canadians can be excused for being confused about the amount of crime in their society. Last year produced horrific scenes of people being murdered and their bodies dismembered, several executions in public places in Toronto, and the media reporting that shootings and stabbings in different cities are on the increase.”

  • Fact: “In 2009, the vast majority (93%) of Canadians aged 15 years and older living in the provinces said they felt satisfied with their personal safety from crime.”
  • Fact: “Most Canadians said they felt safe at night. About 83% of Canadians said that they were not at all worried when home alone in the evening. Of those who walked alone in their neighbourhood at night, 90% said they felt safe doing so.”
  • Fact: “Almost two-thirds (62%) of Canadians believed that the amount of crime in their neighbourhood was the same compared to 5 years earlier, while one-quarter (26%) felt that it had increased.”

Source: Statistics Canada Study: Perceptions of personal safety and crime, 2010.

  • Fact: In 2011, Canada experienced its lowest rate of firearm homicides in 50 years.

Source: Statistics Canada: Homicide in Canada, 2011

Newark: “Statistics Canada also conducts a survey of whether Canadians were victims of crime. These results for 2009 show a huge discrepancy with the amount of crime reported to police. In 2009, 7.4 million Canadians reported they were victims of at least one of the eight specific crimes covered by the survey, compared with the police count of only two million total crimes.”

  • Fact: ““Victims of violent and household crime had reasons for not reporting the incident to the police. The most common reasons were believing that the incident was not important enough (68%), followed by thinking there was nothing the police could do to help (59%). Other reasons included having dealt with the situation in another way (42%) and feeling that the incident was a personal matter (36%).”

Source: Criminal victimization in Canada, 2009

Newark: “The public is increasingly reluctant to report crime to the police, partly out of fear of retribution from criminals and partly out of frustration with falling rates of crime being solved by the police.”

  • Fact: Newark has produced no evidence to support this claim.

Newark: “[O]ver the past four decades, the solve rate for murders has fallen from 95 per cent to 75 per cent, and is less than 50 per cent for gang-related killings. This growing reluctance to report crime to police leads to erroneous headlines that “crime is down.” The real headline should read: “Canadians’ reporting of crime hits an all-time low.”

  • Fact: “Police are solving more crimes than in the past. The weighted clearance rate rose for the seventh consecutive year to 39.4% in 2010, up from 33.5% in 2003. This measure represents the proportion of reported crimes solved by police, factoring in the seriousness of individual offences.”

Source: Statistics Canada, “Police service clearance rates, 2010”.

Posted in Crime Rates, Media and Crime, Police | Leave a comment

Drug Control in Guyana

Posted on April 28, 2013 by

Sent to the Stabroek News on April 28 2013

Dear Editor,

I am a criminologist who came to Guyana for 10 days last month to visit friends in the Corentyne area. I am also a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) which is an international group of current and former peace officers who are dedicated to drawing attention to the devastating consequences of drug prohibition. I made several observations during my trip which do not bode well for Guyana’s efforts to control the global drug trade.

Although we thoroughly enjoyed our time with the Guyanese people, there were two events which we found quite disturbing. Both involved being stopped on the Rupert Craig Highway by heavily armed men. Had it not been for our driver who quickly identified them as military personnel or, on the second occasion, as police officers, we had no way of knowing that the intervention was legally sanctioned.

Remarkably, as soon as my wife and I were identified as “Caucasians” at these roadblocks, we were waived through with no further questions. Therefore, if one wants to transport drugs through Guyana, it seems that criminal organizations need only to include Caucasians as passengers in vehicles containing contraband. However, that is not my main point.

The roadblocks and other deterrence-based strategies which are currently intended to deter drug traffickers will not prevent drugs from entering and leaving Guyana, nor will they have an impact on the number of domestic drug users.

The Canadian experience with drug control strategies, modeled after the United States, has focused almost exclusively on deterring the supply side of drugs for nearly 100 years. By official accounts, including two Senate reports by our federal government, the laws are an unmitigated failure and waste of taxpayer’s money.

Marijuana has become more plentiful, potent and cheaper since its criminalization in 1919. Our government has surrendered its control of the cannabis trade to armed thugs who engage in public turf wars at considerable risk to by-standers. Law enforcement efforts to control drugs have only short-term results and set the conditions for further violence as gangs continually fight over market share.

According to recent polls, residents in my province (British Columbia) are in support of legalizing marijuana to be sold through licensed, private vendors, much like the state of Washington which borders our province. The criminalization of marijuana is rapidly losing public support.

As an alternative to a so-called “war on drugs”, we might learn from one of Canada’s most successful drug strategies against the deadliest substance of them all: tobacco.

Fewer Canadian youth are smoking than ever before. Tobacco is tightly regulated in Canada. It cannot be sold to minors, advertised in print or electronic media, and retailers must hide tobacco products behind opaque screens. Consistent public education messages in our schools warns students of the hazards of tobacco but leaves the decision about smoking to them without any risk of arrest for their choices.

Our drug policies to deter the use of tobacco products are showing signs of success. These lessons involving strict marketing controls and education for youth can be employed to control other psychoactive substances. The outcome will be a reduction in the demand for drugs and criminal organizations will no longer control their supply.

Posted in Cannabis, drug prohibition, illict drugs | 1 Comment

The Immorality of Enforcing Marijuana Laws

Posted on April 20, 2013 by

The police should now admit that it is immoral for them to enforce the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) as it pertains to marijuana. Laws must be justified on some moral basis in order for them to be supported by the public. Without support, our police lose the moral authority to enforce cannabis laws.

Over 70% of British Columbians support research to evaluate the regulation of cannabis (from an Angus Reid poll conducted earlier this month[1]). This measure of public opinion is consistent a similar poll conducted in the fall of 2012 which indicated that a majority of Canadians (57%) are ready to see marijuana legalized.

cannabis_leaf_cannabis-229px

The law enforcement community influences Canadian’s perceptions about the evils of marijuana, richly sprinkled with war metaphors, the portrayal of cannabis producers and smokers as deviants, and the resultant chaos should the public contemplate legally tolerant alternatives.

One of the challenges for the police is to convince those of us (especially parents) who lived through the 70s and 80s that today’s pot is “more harmful”. They frequently tell us that the active ingredient in marijuana (THC) is found in higher concentrations when grown under the tender care of hydroponic lights. There’s at least two problems with this claim.

First, the insistence that higher THC concentrations makes marijuana dangerous is like arguing that whiskey is more dangerous than beer because it contains proportionately more alcohol. Cannabis users will smoke less to enjoy the same effects – just like those of us who drink a smaller quantity of Scotch than wine but still achieve the same cognitive pleasures.

It’s a tragic irony that more Canadians have died or been injured from the enforcement of marijuana laws, than from any harms caused by the herb itself. The sporadic gun violence in Lower Mainland streets is the direct consequence of criminalizing a product which the public demands in a marketplace where the government has surrendered its controlling shares to the business of criminal organizations.

Secondly, the harms created by cannabis are the result of its legal status , not its pharmacological properties which, for most users, are relatively benign according to the research examined by our own Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs in 2002. Any negative effects associated with cannabis can be mediated, according to a recent 2011 article in the Canadian Journal of Public Health by researchers with Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University.

The law creates opportunities for a  black market and endangers the lives of citizens and police. The law is wrong. The law itself must be seen as criminal because of its consequences and must not be enforced by the police.

To have impact on cannabis markets, Parliament must regulate the domestic cultivation of marijuana so that the incentive for organized crime evaporates, except perhaps for a black market to supply smokers south of the 49th Parallel (except in those states which have already legalized cannabis).

The morally preferable alternative to the current failure of our so called “drug war” would be for police to take a bold stand like that of RCMP Commissioner Aylesworth Bowen Perry during Prohibition in 1917.

“No instruction whatsoever has been issued by me in regard to [enforcing prohibition],” he reminded his senior officers in Alberta. Unless otherwise notified, Perry told them unequivocally, prohibition “is not to be enforced by the Mounted Police”[2].

Declaring alcohol prohibition “unenforceable”, Commissioner Perry subsequently cancelled RCMP contracts to Alberta and Saskatchewan.

It’s unlikely that the same pronouncements about the abject failure of our drug laws will be heard from senior police officers anytime soon. Their interest is in advancing their careers and prestige in a police subculture where “takedowns” and “busting grow shows” get more kudos than informed political activism within the ranks. Consequently, we must elect politicians who promise to put an end to the violence associated with the unregulated distribution of cannabis.

According to the latest Angus Reid poll on the topic, 44% of respondents will have more favourable opinions of BC politicians who support “an ethically approved research study seeking to evaluate the impacts of a taxation (i.e., legalization) and regulation strategy to control adult cannabis use”.

Politicians can give back to the police some of their moral authority by not requiring them to enforce laws which cause far more harm than good.

It’s what we the people expect from you.

[1] The question went as follows:

Preamble. Many U.S. states are reforming their marijuana laws including Washington state, which has legalized the adult use of marijuana. British Columbia has experienced major unintended consequences resulting from marijuana prohibition including the proliferation of illegal marijuana grow ops and related organized crime concerns. Researchers in B.C. are interested to conduct a research trial to assess if a strictly regulated (i.e. legal) system for adult marijuana purchases could cut profits to organized crime, raise tax revenue and better protect young people from the free availability of marijuana that exists under prohibition. The study would be ethically and federally approved, involve a pilot site in one community, require key stakeholder support and be halted if unanticipated harms emerged.

Question 1. Do you support or oppose a B.C.research trial conducted by local experts and health scientists aiming to evaluate whether the taxation (i.e., legalization) and strict regulation of adult marijuana use could reduce profits to organized crime, raise tax revenue and better protect young people from the availability of marijuana that exists under prohibition?

[2] Rich Mole, Whisky Wars of the Canadian West: Fifty Years of Battles Against the Bottle, Heritage House, 2012, p. 78.

Posted in Cannabis, drug prohibition, illict drugs, Police | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Drug seizures in Nanaimo fail to stop trafficking

Posted on January 23, 2013 by

The recent seizure of drugs and weapons by Nanaimo RCMP does nothing to “disrupt supply” and won’t prevent more illicit drugs from entering the city.

girls smoking cannabis

The largest drug seizure in Canadian history took place in the year 2000 when 100 kilos of heroin were confiscated in Vancouver’s port.

Subsequent research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2003 showed that, contrary to law-enforcement predictions, the price of heroin actually dropped in Vancouver.  A seizure of this magnitude had no impact on supply. Furthermore, the BC Coroner reported that the number of deaths attributable to heroin overdoses increased three months after the bust.

As a former correctional officer in a maximum-security prison, I witnessed drug use and near-fatal drug overdoses in the most restrictive environment which the law allowed. It’s hardly surprising that drug trafficking flourishes in open society where misguided laws created and now sustain a black market.

The utter failure of Canada’s drug prohibitionist polices to support health and safety is painfully repeated by the federal government’s willful blindness to decades of impartial research.  It is prohibition and not the drugs themselves which place the police and public at risk.

If we want to stop people from using deadly drugs, we should heed the successful regulatory and educational efforts by Health Canada to convince young people not to smoke tobacco.

A much smaller proportion of youth are smoking today than 30 years ago – all without putting a single person in jail.

Posted in Cannabis, drug prohibition, illict drugs | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

In search of Criminology’s Holy Grail

Posted on January 7, 2013 by

The disciplines of physics, astronomy and chemistry are rumored on the verge of discovering the “Higgs boson” particle – the essential element upon which the universe is comprised, based on experiments in the Large Hadron Collider. Biology has Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory as the uncontested paradigm to understand all living things, past and present. Current research in criminology is taking on a similar trajectory to identify that which is essential about crime or more specifically, criminality. Is criminology getting close to finding its own Holy Grail?

The paradigmatic shift from sociological to individual accounts of variation in criminal behaviour started with a landmark text by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990). Boldly titled, A General Theory of Crime, the authors reviewed decades of research and claimed that criminology could not identify its independent variable, mainly because it conflated crime (an event) with criminality (a propensity for antisocial behaviour). The cause of crime was simple: low self-control. Their book was initially scorned by many sociologists who believed that, ultimately, the structure of society drove otherwise good people into criminal behaviour and therefore, studying variance among individuals and their traits was partial at best. Even the wide differences between women and men in their propensities for deviant behaviour was deemed to be the result of “differential socialization” rather than innate differences between sexes. Despite the skeptical reception of A General Theory of Crime, low self-control theory has since stood the test of more than 300 published studies, most of which have lent support to its basic premises (Delisi & Vaughn, 2008).

The individual propensity to commit crime is thought by some to be associated with impulsivity or low self-control (Beaver & Boutwell, 2010; Piquero, Moffitt, & Wright, 2007; Raine et al., 2005). The origins of this trait are the outcome of a parenting style which fails to instill the necessary internal restraints in children before the age of eight. Parents or care-givers must monitor, recognize and punish a child through an explicit disapproval of the offending behaviour (but not corporal punishment). Rather than arguing, as do many sociologists, that certain urban areas characterized by social disorganization and high crime rates will motivate residents to break the law, the alternate thesis is that people with low self-control will self-select into these neighbourhoods; abundant criminal opportunities will be available for those with this attribute (Gibson, Sullivan, Jones, & Piquero, 2010).

The failure to restrain one’s impulses leads to adult crime but also other risk-taking, “analogous behaviours” such as smoking tobacco, heavy drinking, using illicit drugs, early pregnancy, and even a propensity for head injuries as the result of risky behaviour. Low self-control is difficult to ameliorate after adolescent years;  it is an enduring trait across the life-course. Its manifestation depends upon the opportunities which present themselves and most crime is trivial, carries high risks, and involves little planning (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). Low self-control also has the potential to be transmitted from one generation to the next (Boutwell & Beaver, 2010) and its genetic transference is currently being studied  (Ferguson, 2010; Schnupp, Wright, Beaver, Delisi, & Vaughn, 2012).

A recent study by Terrie Moffitt and her associates has tracked almost every child born in in Dunedin, New Zealand from their birth (1972-73) to age 32 (Moffitt et al., 2011). The 1,037 members of this group have been evaluated every two years with health and psychological assessments, reports from the subjects themselves, their parents, and teachers. By age 11, the researchers had an index measure of each child’s level of self-control. Followed into adulthood, those with low self-control fared much more poorly than those with higher levels.

At age 32, those with low self-control had more problems with alcohol and drugs, were more likely to be single parents, have poorer health and more financial problems, and had been convicted for crimes. They were caught within the health and social consequences of decisions made earlier in life: “Adolescents  with low self-control  made  mistakes, such as starting smoking, leaving high school, and having an unplanned  baby, that could ensnare them in lifestyles with lasting ill effects” (Moffitt et al., 2011, p. 2697). The group displaying the greatest problems with impulsivity had “more of every type of mental health problem”  than others in a comparable group (Moffitt, Caspi, Harrington, & Milne, 2002, p. 192).

Ten percent of the cohort males in Moffitt et al.’s sample earned the label “life-course persistent” offenders – those who showed “stable, pervasive and extreme antisocial behaviour  in childhood plus extreme delinquent involvement in adolescence” (Moffitt et al., 2002, p. 197). They accounted for five times their share of the cohort’s violent offences and were more likely than others to display a psychopathic personality profile. This group also carried the highest load of childhood developmental risk factors, clearly demonstrating the relationship between neuropsychological deficits in their early years and socially destructive behaviour in adulthood.

Not surprisingly, people with low self-control contribute to higher costs for society. Hospital care, mental health services, income subsidies, and criminal justice expenses are disproportionately consumed by this group. It follows that society can save tens of millions of dollars by encouraging the development of internal controls in children if policy-makers make it easy – or the default choice – to do what is healthy. These are

so-called  “opt-out” schemes  that  tempt people to eat healthy food, save money, and obey laws by making these the default options that require no effortful self-control. If citizens were obliged to opt out of default health-enhancing programs or payroll-deduction  retirement savings schemes, individuals with low self-control should tend to take the easy option and stay in programs, because opting out requires unappealing  effort and  planning. (Moffitt et al., 2011, p. 2693).

 Lest we be tempted, it is short-sighted to blame parents for personal attributes most often correlated with crime and analogous behaviours. Impulsive behaviour in childhood and adolescence is one manifestation of Conduct Disorder (CD) which overlaps with the legal definitions of “delinquency”. CD is correlated with neuropsychological deficits as a consequence of brain trauma from things like fetal alcohol syndrome, maternal stress in the third trimester, low birth weight, or poor maternal nutrition and/or drug use during pregnancy (Beaver, Vaughn, DeLisi, & Higgins, 2010; Moffitt, 1993; National Crime Prevention Centre, 2011). In their early years, children born with these deficits are much more likely to suffer from Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which interferes with their ability to learn at the same pace as their non-affected classroom peers. Those children afflicted with CD often pose management problems in the classroom, are isolated by their peers, and end up doing poorly in school. In their early teenage years and without the proper interventions, they generally gravitate towards more serious law-breaking and by their early twenties, have been arrested, convicted and spent time in prison – a pattern that will repeat itself as they age into adulthood. The outliers in this cohort will be responsible for a significantly disproportionate share of violent crime (Denson, DeWall, & Finkel, 2012; Moffitt et al., 2002).

Has criminology found its Holy Grail? While it may be tempting to believe that low self-control is the main “cause of crime”, the theory and research on impulsivity misses a great deal. It has considerable difficulty explaining the motivation for individuals who are otherwise “normal” but use their corporate or government positions to victimize the public as consumers, shareholders, taxpayers, and employees.

The predatory personalities behind the Savings and Loan crisis in the United States (Calavita, Tillman, & Pontell, 1997), the 2001 Enron bankruptcy (Friedrichs, 2004), and the 2008 Wall Street crash (Nguyen & Pontell, 2010) were not forged within the families and neighbourhoods shared by street criminals. These men were cunning enough to risk the fortunes of other people’s money to make themselves wealthy in a relatively unsupervised environment (Prasch, 2012). The crooked activities of corporations reaches deeply into warfare (Chambliss, Michalowski, & Kramer, 2010; Rothe & Ross, 2010; Welch, 2009), including the illegal invasion of Iraq (Kramer & Michalowski, 2006). These are crimes of the power elite. It’s difficult to find explanations for their behaviour which focuses on individual pathologies like low self-control, although there is some recent evidence that these principal actors display the same personalities as do clinical populations of psychopaths (Babiak, Neumann, & Hare, 2010; Bakan, 2004; Ragatz, Fremouw, & Baker, 2012).

Criminology has not yet found an over-arching theory by which to explain the behaviours of those who inflict acts of force or fraud in the pursuit of self-interest, and in so doing, wreak more economic and physical harms than do common street criminals. Only when we have a theory that covers all forms of socially injurious conduct, and not just that which is criminalized by the state, can we lay claim to a “dominant paradigm”.

Our search continues.

References

Babiak, P., Neumann, C. S., & Hare, R. D. (2010). Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 28(2), 174-193. doi: Doi 10.1002/Bsl.925

Bakan, J. (2004). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Toronto, Ont.: Penguin.

Beaver, K. M., & Boutwell, B. B. (2010). The Intergenerational Transmission of Low Self-control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 47(2), 174-209. doi: 10.1177/0022427809357715

Beaver, K. M., Vaughn, M. G., DeLisi, M., & Higgins, G. E. (2010). The biosocial correlates of neuropsychological deficits: results from the national longitudinal study of adolescent health. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 54(6), 878-894. doi: 10.1177/0306624×09345993

Boutwell, B. B., & Beaver, K. M. (2010). The Intergenerational Transmission of Low Self-control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 47(2), 174-209. doi: 10.1177/0022427809357715

Calavita, K., Tillman, R., & Pontell, H. N. (1997). The savings and loan debacle, financial crime, and the state. Annual Review of Sociology, 23, 19-38.

Chambliss, W. J., Michalowski, R., & Kramer, R. C. (Eds.). (2010). State Crime in the Global Age: Willan Publishing.

Delisi, M., & Vaughn, M. G. (2008). The Gottfredson-Hirschi Critiques Revisited: Reconciling Self-Control Theory, Criminal Careers, and Career Criminals. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 52(5), 520-537.

Denson, T. F., DeWall, C. N., & Finkel, E. J. (2012). Self-Control and Aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(1), 20-25. doi: 10.1177/0963721411429451

Ferguson, C. J. (2010). Genetic Contributions to Antisocial Personality and Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review From an Evolutionary Perspective. Journal of Social Psychology, 150(2), 160-180.

Friedrichs, D. (2004). Enron et al.: Paradigmatic white collar crime cases for the new century. Critical Criminology, 12, 113–132.

Gibson, C. L., Sullivan, C. J., Jones, S., & Piquero, A. R. (2010). “Does It Take a Village?” Assessing Neighborhood Influences on Children’s Self-Control. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 47(1), 31-62. doi: 10.1177/0022427809348903

Gottfredson, M. R., & Hirschi, T. (1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Kramer, R., & Michalowski, R. (2006). The invasion of Iraq. In R. J. Michalowski & R. C. Kramer (Eds.), State-corporate crime: Wrongdoing at the intersection of business and government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers.

Moffitt, T. E. (1993). The neuropsychology of conduct disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 5(1-2), 135-151. doi: 10.1017/S0954579400004302

Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., . . . Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1010076108

Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Harrington, H., & Milne, B. J. (2002). Males on the life-course-persistent and adolescence-limited anti-social pathways: Follow up at age 26 years. Developmental-Psychology and Psychopathology, 14, 179-207.

National Crime Prevention Centre. (2011). Youth At-Risk of Serious and Life-Course Offending: Risk Profiles, Trajectories, and Interventions Research Report: 2011-02. http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cp/res/2011-yar-eng.aspx

Nguyen, T. H., & Pontell, H. N. (2010). Mortgage origination fraud and the global economic crisis: A criminological analysis. Criminology & Public Policy, 9(3), 591-612. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9133.2010.00653.x

Piquero, A. R., Moffitt, T. E., & Wright, B. E. (2007). Self-Control and Criminal Career Dimensions. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 23(1), 72-89. doi: 10.1177/1043986206298949

Prasch, R. E. (2012). The Dodd-Frank Act: Financial Reform or Business as Usual? Journal of Economic Issues, 46(2), 549-556.

Ragatz, L. L., Fremouw, W., & Baker, E. (2012). The Psychological Profile of White-collar Offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(7), 978-997. doi: 10.1177/0093854812437846

Raine, A., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Loeber, R., Stouthamer-Loeber, M., & Lynam, D. (2005). Neurocognitive Impairments in Boys on the Life-Course Persistent Antisocial Path. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114(1), 38-49.

Rothe, D. L., & Ross, J. I. (2010). Private Military Contractors, Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability. Justice Quarterly, 27(4), 593-617. doi: Pii 912497226

Schnupp, R., Wright, J. P., Beaver, K. M., Delisi, M., & Vaughn, M. (2012). Genes, Maternal Negativity, and Self-Control: Evidence of a Gene × Environment Interaction. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 10(3), 245-260. doi: 10.1177/1541204011429315

Welch, M. (2009). Fragmented power and state-corporate killings: a critique of blackwater in Iraq. Crime, Law and Social Change, 51(3), 351-364. doi: 10.1007/s10611-008-9169-6

Posted in Causes of Crime, Crime Prevention | Leave a comment

Tories take credit for drop in crime

Posted on July 25, 2012 by

In a recent tongue-in-cheek Facebook post, I asked how long it would take before the Canadian government took credit for the annual drop in crime which was reported this week by Statistics Canada.

I didn’t believe any politician would have the effrontery to make such a claim, but Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says that that keeping the bad guys in longer lowers the crime rate.

Reality Check:

  • The government provides no evidence that their get-tough-on-crime policies are responsible for lower rates of crime. They can’t be criticized for making the “correlation does not mean causation” error because their statements are too vague to identify causes.
  • The available evidence from the United States and Canada says that mandatory minimums have not delivered their anticipated returns in public safety[1].
  • A review of the research for the government by the Department of Justice in 2002 shows that incarceration has little or no impact on recidivism[2].
  • A submission by the Canadian Psychological Association to the Senate Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs earlier this year presented research showing that mandatory minimum sentences are expensive, do not reduce crime, and are unjust.
  • Canada’s crime rate has been dropping since the early 1990s, irrespective of the government in power or their particular crime control policies[3].

[1] Fradella, H. F. (2000). Mandatory Minimum Sentences: Arizona’s Ineffective Tool for the Social Control of Driving Under the Influence. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 11(2), 113-135. doi: 10.1177/0887403400011002002

Joan, P. (2011). Beyond the Prison Bubble. Federal Probation, 75(1), 2.

Nsereko, D. D. N. (1999). Minimum sentences and their effect on judicial discretion. Crime Law and Social Change, 31(4), 363-384.

Schlesinger, T. (2011). The Failure of Race Neutral Policies: How Mandatory Terms and Sentencing Enhancements Contribute to Mass Racialized Incarceration. Crime & Delinquency, 57(1), 56-81. doi: 10.1177/0011128708323629

Welsh, B. C., & Farrington, D. P. (2012). Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy. Journal of Criminal Justice, 40(2), 128-133. doi: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2012.01.008

[2] Gabor, T., & Crutcher, N. (2002). Mandatory Minimum Penalties: Their Effects on Crime, Sentencing Disparities, and Justice System Expenditures. 43. Retrieved from http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/
ps/rs/rep/rr02-1a-e.pdf

[3] Statistics Canada. (2011). Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2011 (Catalogue 85-002-X). Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11692-eng.pdf

Posted in Crime Rates, mandatory minimum sentences | Tagged | Leave a comment

RCMP: Difficult Entry, Difficult Exits

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

I’ve been educating students, many of whom aspire to join the RCMP, for the past 23 years. I’m often updated by former students about their rigorous application procedure, and why young women and men have been denied entry into the Mounties.

It turns out that if your spouse has been convicted of a summary conviction offence which did not involve moral turpitude, or if you smoked cannabis at a party when you were 15, or shoplifted a sweater at 16, or have had 6 penalty points on your driver’s license, then you’re not of the moral calibre expected of our national police force which, as journalist Alan Fotheringham pointed has out, is neither Royal nor Mounted.

In speaking to our criminology students, police representatives have boasted that of every 100 applicants, only three are chosen to begin the recruitment cycle of interviewing, background checks, physical fitness assessments, and a polygraph. Regrettably, that screening process does not filter out people like Staff Sergeant Don Ray who violated the RCMP oath at least seven times while he was responsible for the polygraph unit at Edmonton Divisional Headquarters.

Ray is not the most egregious case in recent years. The blue ribbon for police misconduct is claimed by Constable Benjamin “Monty” Robinson, the misfit-in-a-uniform who lead the fatal clusterfuck against an unarmed Polish immigrant who was causing a harmless commotion at the Vancouver Airport  in October, 2007.

The continuing sad story is that Robinson subsequently killed a motorcyclist while off duty in 2008, bolted from the scene of the crash (but left his driver’s license to avoid a conviction for “fleeing the scene of an accident”) and went home to drink enough vodka to “explain” his high blood alcohol content to investigators.

After three years of proceedings while Robinson was off-duty and collected full pay, he was convicted of obstruction of justice. This criminal record now leaves Robinson eligible to be fired from the RCMP.

Not only has the reputation of the RCMP been sullied by obviously poor recruitment methods, but they have little ability to get rid of men who have no qualms about using their peace officer status for selfish, immoral or illegal ends. The public is fed up, and recent opinion polls show it. Further yet, we now see websites like RCMP Watch: Who is Keeping Them Accountable? Good question.

When I started this job, young men (and occasionally women) came to me and said things like, “I’m thinking of applying to the RCMP… what do you think?”

My reply to them covered yes it’s a noble profession, there’s varied and interesting work in policing, make sure you complete your baccalaureate otherwise you’ll be writing speeding tickets for the rest of your life in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan; don’t forget it’s a paramilitary organization and are you cut out for that?

Today I have reservations about recommending the RCMP as a career destination for young people, at least until the force purges its misogynistic culture, focuses their training on service delivery and not so much on “hard policing” (because the former is that’s what their job mostly entails), and rewards occupational behaviour which supports “healthy communities”, rather than its romanticized negative, “crime prevention through enforcement”.

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