What would you do if your property was threatened?

Three in 10 Saskatchewan residents believe people in the province should be permitted to physically confront someone who threatens their personal property, according to a recent survey by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan’s Social Sciences Research Laboratories.

Researchers conducted the telephone survey with 400 Saskatchewan residents in early December as part of a collaboration with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix that involved researchers “taking the pulse” of people’s feelings about certain issues.

More than half of survey respondents — 55 per cent — said the extent to which Saskatchewan residents should be allowed to protect their personal property from crime should be to call police.

Twelve per cent said people should be allowed to verbally confront whoever is threatening their property, while 30 per cent said a physical confrontation was appropriate. More specifically, 12 per cent of respondents said they should be allowed to physically confront a perpetrator of crime without inflicting bodily harm; 10 per cent said they should be able to physically confront a perpetrator by inflicting non-fatal bodily harm; nine per cent said they should be permitted to physically confront a perpetrator by inflicting fatal bodily harm.

There was no significant difference in responses between rural and urban residents.

“It may be busting a myth here,” said Steve Wormith, a professor and director at the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science and Justice Studies. “This idea that the rural country perspective/approach to sort of self-imposed justice just didn’t fly at all ... This result was not a rural phenomenon.”

Ray Orb, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), said he was not surprised by the results. He said while stories of farmers carrying guns to dissuade criminals have been shared in the media, not all rural residents support extreme measures to prevent crime.

SARM made headlines this year when its members overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the association’s leadership to lobby the federal government for relaxed self-defence laws.

Orb said that resolution passed because rural residents were frustrated by increasing numbers of break-ins, possibly fuelled by higher unemployment in the oil and gas sector, and feelings of “frustration” with the RCMP.

“It’s just, I think, a frustration that the police are probably not going to come, they’re not going to come for just a minor break-in or a minor incident,” he said.

Orb said he spent much of the past year working with the RCMP to address concerns around rural crime. He said he thinks the amount of trust rural residents have in the RCMP has increased in the last year, particularly after the province announced this summer that it would invest $5.9 million in an initiative aimed at reducing rural crime by hiring more police officers and expanding the roles of commercial vehicle enforcement officers and conservation officers.

Orb said the message the RCMP is sharing with rural residents is to report crime to police, no matter how small the incident, so they can monitor where crime is happening.

With that in mind, Orb said it’s “a concern” that only 55 per cent of people said calling police was the appropriate response to protecting property threatened by crime. He said he wonders whether more needs to be done to educate people about the importance of reporting crime instead of taking matters into their own hands.

Though he may not agree with it, Orb said he understands why people might support more extreme options.

“I think it’s a hard question to answer,” he said. “You have to put yourself in that position, especially if you have family, especially if you have children, you have to decide what to do.”

In a written statement, the RCMP said “it is not our place to comment on what the laws should or should not be or what public opinion says about them.”

The statement went further to say that, for people’s own safety, people should not attempt to confront or subdue suspects or pursue suspects. “Instead, ensure your own safety by securing yourself and your family members first and then CALLING POLICE and observing and noting as many details as possible,” the statement read.

Responses to the U of S survey suggested men were more likely than women to support the allowance of more extreme measures to protect their property.

Nearly half of surveyed men — 46 per cent — said they should be allowed to physically confront someone who threatens their property. Only 15 per cent of women said the same.

Extreme reactions were also more common among respondents under the age of 55 compared to respondents aged 55 and older. Nearly one in four respondents under the age of 55 — 39 per cent — said they should be able to physically confront someone who threatens their property, while just 18 per cent of people 55 years and older said they support this.

Because this is the first time the university has done the survey, it’s not possible to know if people’s penchant to physically confront perpetrators of crime has increased, decreased or stayed steady over time.

Wormith said he hopes researchers can repeat the survey in the future to monitor trends in this behaviour.