Canada’s homicide rate is lowest since 1966
Nine of Canada’s 505 homicides in 2013 were in Ottawa, two were shot
Nearly five decades after Canada’s homicide rate started to spike dramatically, amid the social turmoil of the 1960s, the numbers have finally returned to their midcentury baseline.
The country’s 505 reported homicides in 2013 made for a national rate of about 1.44 victims per 100,000 population, which Statistics Canada said Monday “marks the lowest homicide rate since 1966.”
It is a trend reflected in homicide data from the United States and around the world: 10 years of steeply increasing criminal violence, peaking in the mid-1970s, followed by a steady, slow decline in the years since.
This homicidal boom and bust has invited the speculation of sociologists, who have come up with theories as diverse as the abolition of capital punishment, the legalization of abortion, the elimination of leaded gasoline and the rise in the use of juvenile psychiatric drugs.
But broadly, according to one leading Canadian criminologist, what we are seeing is simply the slow progress of civilization, a dynamic that was set in motion by the “decivilizing era” of the 1960s.
“Everything was turned upside down,” and people responded by growing disengaged and less committed to society, but eventually found their way back to a stable social contract.
“Culturally, we’ve become much more civilized,” said Neil Boyd, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, adding the shift was the result of cultural change, rather than deliberate policy efforts.
This is a view that owes much to the work of Norbert Elias, a German sociologist who sketched the process by which the growth of evermore complex social structures promotes an internalized sense of self-restraint, which is reflected in decreased violence and other cultural offences. Roughly, advanced societies teach their members to police themselves.
That process was undermined by the upheaval of the 1960s, as the postwar baby boomers came of age and overturned the social structures of their parents.
Prof. Boyd points out young men, who now represent nine per cent of the population, then made up almost twice that, and given that homicide tends to be committed by young men, the numbers started to reflect that.
At the same time, he said, alcohol consumption went up 50 per cent per capita, divorce rose by 400 per cent, illegal drug crimes spiked, and unregulated industries grew up, especially around drugs, “where people take matters into their own hands.”
The StatsCan report shows a drop in firearm homicides, of which a majority were from handguns, also marked the lowest rate since 1974.
Americans have seen the same trends, but with numbers much higher, going from four per 100,000 in the 1960s, peaking above 10, and falling back to about six today. Globally, the decline since the mid-1990s is also evident in countries from Europe to Asia.
Only nine of the 505 homicides on record in Canada last year occurred in Ottawa, giving the city an overall homicide rate of 0.92 per 100,000 people.
Firearm-related homicides were down across the country while fatal stabbings increased and accounted for 40 per cent of all homicides.
In Ottawa, six of nine victims were fatally stabbed; two were shot. Police have not released the cause of death in the unsolved killing of 27-year-old mother and sex-trade worker Amy Paul.
The unsolved shooting death of known Bloods gang member and aspiring rapper 24-year-old Malik Adjokatcher is believed to be gangrelated.
Of the seven homicides in Ottawa for which charges have been laid, all knew their attackers. Three were related to their suspected killers, who then died by suicide.
Alex Corchis, 10, and his sister Katie, 6, were killed by their mother Alison Easton in their Stittsville home in January 2013. Jim Thomasing was shot to death by his son Peter. Both Easton and Thomasing killed themselves after carrying out their attacks.
Melissa Richmond, 28, was the only alleged victim of intimate partner homicide in 2013 in Ottawa. Her husband, Howard Richmond, is awaiting trial on a charge of firstdegree murder after what police say was a killing that prompted Richmond to report his wife missing, triggering a massive search for the young woman before police found her body in a drainage ditch at South Keys Shopping Centre.