While most crime was on the wane between 19, assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm climbed steadily year after year, posting a dramatic 32.3 per cent rise over the decade. One place to start is by pondering the unsettling data for the most serious types of assault. ![]() But there is a way to look at the figures that sees some truth in both perspectives. The disconnect between statistics showing less crime, and public fear that society is growing more violent, might seem impossible to reconcile. There are people in many parts of this country that are feeling less safe." I don't think this is illusory, I don't think it's imaginative. "But concern about crime in general is something I get everywhere that I go. "I don't think there's any question there are positive indicators out there," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in an interview when asked about the reassuring statistics. Victims' rights groups, some police, and, especially, the Tory government, all put more emphasis on popular impressions than dry data. Most places - including every province but Newfoundland, and all of the nine biggest Canadian cities - reported lower crime rates last year than the year before.īut the numbers haven't done anything to quiet those inclined to tell a more alarming crime story. Most offences - from break-ins to homicides - are down. The most recent STATISTICS CANADA report on crime, released on July 17, showed that the national rate fell in 2007 to its lowest level in three decades. It's this sort of front-page outrage, with a bit of political spin thrown in, that causes criminologists who pore over crime data to worry about the gap between public perceptions and facts. Asked by reporters last week about the horrific death of Tim McLean, the 22-year-old Winnipeg man who was stabbed and then beheaded by another passenger on a bus travelling a lonely stretch of Manitoba highway, Public Safety Minister Stockwell DAY took the opportunity to call for the case to be prosecuted "as aggressively as possible" - as if there was some reason to imagine the authorities might go easy on the killer. Politics rarely helps to bring the real issues into focus. CRIME can be a hard subject to think clearly about, especially in the aftermath of a particularly disturbing murder.
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