Crime rates may not be declining

POLICE CHIEF SAYS CRIME IS MOVING ONLINE

Statistics suggesting crime rates in Canada have been falling for decades may not tell the whole story when it comes to criminal wrongdoing, the chief of Halifax Regional Police says.

Jean-Michel Blais says there are indications that the nature of crime is changing in a way that is not reflected in traditional crime data.

“And this crime is not being committed by your neighbour, and probably not someone here in Nova Scotia or even in Canada,” he said in an interview. “It’s being committed by somebody in a different country.”

Blais says traditional crimes appear to be “morphing” and migrating to criminal acts perpetrated online.

As a result, he says, crime probably hasn’t decreased as much as statistics might suggest.

In 2014, a study in the United Kingdom found just over half of those surveyed in Britain had been the victim of an online crime, including identity theft, hacking and illegally accessing and stealing from bank accounts.

The study found that much of this crime was never reported, which means it didn’t show up in police statistics.

The Get Safe Online survey, conducted by market research firm Vision Critical, also showed that 53 per cent of those surveyed said they considered online crimes as serious as physical crimes.

“Crime really hasn’t gone down as much as we think,” Blais said in an interview. “It’s ... migrated onto the Internet.”

Last year, a PwC study conducted for the British government found 90 per cent of large corporations surveyed in Britain had experienced a security breach last year.