Tough on crime works — do the Freakonomics

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2010 (5819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

2222Statistics Canada says that Canadians reported 2.2 million crimes to police last year, down about three per cent from 2008. And my city, Richmond, was even better than the average, with a four per cent drop in known incidents. “In fact, the vast majority of crime categories enjoyed an appreciative dip,” burbled the happy reporter.

Except for a few “blips along the way,” as the reporter cutely put it. Murders, for example, bucked the downward trend, and were up 150 per cent, from two in 2008 to five in 2009 in our small city. Sexual assaults were up 13 per cent. And sexual violations against children were up 100 per cent.

I started to wonder if this article was a sick attempt at satire. It went on. Extortion was up a whopping 184 per cent, from 20 to 58. Forcible confinement jumped by 63 per cent. Assaults with a weapon went up seven percent. Also up were attacks on peace officers (64 per cent), indecent acts 64 per cent) and impaired driving (45 per cent).

What, exactly, went down? Well, use of firearms was down, as well as robberies and break and enters. So that, I suppose, is good news.

The crime rate in Richmond, and in all of Canada, did indeed fall in 2009, when compared to the previous year and the recent past. In 1991, crime in Canada hit an all-time high and has been falling ever since.

But crime isn’t down for those of us who remember when it was safe for kids to play outdoors and who didn’t know anybody who locked their doors.

In fact, according to StatsCan, Canada’s “crime rate” (the total criminal code incidents per 100,000 population) was 6,406 in 2009, almost two and a half times higher than the 1962 rate of 2,771 per 100,000.

Even more disturbing, the violent-crime rate is 1,314, almost six times higher than the 1962 rate of 221 per 100,000.

StatsCan has made changes in violent-crime rate that make comparisons prior to 1998 difficult, but no matter how you count, violence has increased many-fold since 1962.

Some violent crime has increased more recently. For example, level 2 assault (weapon/causing bodily harm) is up 32 per cent in the past decade. Aggravated assault is up 23 per cent in the past 10 years. Use of firearms has increased 68 per cent and kidnapping is up 126 per cent.

But the pointy-heads continue to tell us that “crime is down.” Canada’s mainstream intelligentsia scoffs at anyone who is “tough on crime,” insisting that there is “no evidence” that putting people in jail deters crime.

Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson sneers at measures such as mandatory minimum sentences and more prison time and calls our government policies on crime “useless” and “counterproductive.”

But there are at least two experts who have answers that differ from the conventional wisdom. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of the book, Freakonomics, took a different approach. They asked: Why, after more than half a century of stable crime rates, did crime increase so dramatically starting in the early 1960s, to peak in the early 1990s? And what could explain the sudden reversal of a steady 30-year increase in the crime rate when it started dropping during the 1990s?

The authors concluded that the original increase in crime started with a more lenient justice system, beginning in the 1960s. Conviction rates went down and sentences became shorter. If you were a criminal, the incentives to commit a crime (decreased likelihood of being convicted and shorter prison terms) lined up in your favour. The result, the authors contend, was a surge in crime.

So what caused the rate to start down? There are many reasons, including an aging population, but the authors contend that one reason is that, during the 1990s, they started locking up criminals again.

Analyzing the data, the authors found that harsher prison sentences act as a deterrent for both the criminal already locked up and for the would-be criminals on the street. According to Levitt and Dubner, “the evidence linking increased punishment with lower crime rates is very strong” and accounts for at least some of the decreased crime we are now witnessing.

The Freakonomics authors include a quote that makes me smile: “Apparently it takes a Ph.D. in criminology to doubt that keeping dangerous criminals incarcerated cuts crime.”

It isn’t your imagination that there seems to be more crime nowadays. It’s true. People are frightened and want violent criminals locked up. Maybe a conservative tough-on-crime policy isn’t so off-base after all. Mandatory minimum sentences and longer sentences would get my vote anyway.

Marilyn Baker is a freelance writer

living in Richmond, B.C.