Good news, and bad, in provincial crime stats

Istumbled upon B.C.’s 2016 yearend crime statistics the other day, which were released in August but as far as I can determine haven’t been widely reported.

Crime stats always need to be taken with a grain of salt as they can be affected by, for instance, how aggressive police are at investigating certain crimes. But they do provide a snapshot of criminality that can be compared to previous years, or to other parts of Canada.

This year’s report was the usual mixed bag — some crimes were up, others down — so there are positives and negatives in the numbers.

The good news — although no one should organize a celebratory parade just yet — is that B.C.’s overall crime rate fell in 2016 after climbing in 2014 and 2015. The rate fell by 0.9 per cent, to 77.4 offences per 1,000 British Columbians, from 78.1.

As well, B.C.’s crime severity index — a figure calculated by measuring total crimes and their severity, where crimes that receive longer sentences are given a greater weight — also fell last year, dropping to 93.6 from 94.3 in 2015, a 0.7-per-cent decrease. The drop was “primarily” due to a decrease in the number of break and enters and robberies, according to the ministry of public safety and solicitor-general.

“The number of violent offences in B.C. decreased by 4.9 per cent in 2016, with a 6.1-per-cent decrease in the violent crime rate (from 12.1 violent offences per 1,000 population in 2015 to 11.4 in 2016),” says the report, which noted that the number of homicides fell to 87 last year from 97 in 2015.

“This is the lowest B.C.’s violent crime rate has been since at least 1998.”

While it is certainly good news that there were “2,786 fewer violent offences recorded in B.C. in 2016” and that overall crime is down, the crime picture remains pretty grim in B.C.

The province’s crime severity index, for instance, is 31.9-percent higher than the national rate of 71 per 1,000 population. Nearly a third worse than the national average? Yikes!

Among the 10 provinces, we have the fourth worst crime after Saskatchewan (CSI of 148.8), Manitoba (114.4) and Alberta (102.5). Canada’s three northern territories have much worse crime problems. To put B.C.’s 93.6 CSI figure in perspective, the Northwest Territories has a CSI of 291.7, followed by Nunavut (286.4) and Yukon (183.9).

One bit of good news is that B.C.’s youth CSI to 35.7 from 39.3 in 2015, a 9.2-per-cent decrease and 40.6 per cent lower than the national youth CSI of 60.1.

Then there are the crimes that rose last year. Lest anyone think that the avalanche of sexual harassment and sexual assaults being reported is largely a problem in Hollywood, think again.

Sex assaults in B.C. rose 6.1 per cent to 3,125 in 2015 from 2,944 the year before; indecent/harassing phone calls climbed to 5,469 cases from 4,901, an 11.6-per-cent increase; while the number of child pornography incidents climbed a staggering 71.4 per cent from 2015 to 2016, from 1,608 to 2,756 cases. And that’s just the sex crimes that were reported.

The increase in child porn, says the report, “can at least partially be attributed to the proactive efforts of B.C.’s Integrated Child Exploitation Unit, which targets people accessing child pornography online.” Recall my point above about increased crime rates not necessarily meaning an increase in criminal behaviour.

On the flip side, that just 43 prostitution cases were recorded last year or that there was an 11.5-percent decrease in the number of cannabis offences year over year largely means there was less enforcement, not a drop in those activities. (Although some might be surprised to learn that 2,809 British Columbians were charged with marijuana offences in 2016, even with that drug being on the verge of being legalized by the Trudeau government.)

Finally, B.C.’s crime clearance rate — the percentage of crimes in which charges are laid — for all offences was a shockingly low 27.6 per cent, well below the national rate of 41.4. (The violent crime clearance rate was 57.8 per cent, up from 55.9 per cent in 2015, but below the Canada average of 75.3 per cent. The B.C. property crime clearance rate was a lousy 13.5 per cent, again well under the national rate of 21.2 per cent.)

The good news is that overall crime is down in the province. But the numbers show that B.C. police by a pretty wide margin are not solving crimes as well as their colleagues in other provinces.

Improving B.C.’s clearance rate ought to be a top priority for police moving forward.