Rising crime and perceptions of rising crime in Canadian
urban areas have become more concerning as media reports increase and a recent
study by the MacDonald-Laurier Institute provides some evidence to back up the
feeling that crime is up. The report
looks at the last decade’s worth of police reported crime data for nine major
Canadian urban centers: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Peel, Toronto,
Vancouver, Winnipeg, and York Region.
Essentially, crime and especially violent crime is up in all of these
cities with sexual assaults in particular showing large increases. Of course, this study omits a lot of cities
and so of course the question that arises for inquiring local minds is how Thunder Bay has been doing
over the last little while? Is crime
rising in Thunder Bay? Well, it depends on the time span you want to look at as
well as the specific type of crime. But overall, the feeling that crime is rising here is not misplaced.
Using police reported crime data from Statistics Canada, here is a quick snapshot of how some crime rates in Thunder Bay (crimes per 100,000 population) have been performing. Figure 1 plots the crime rate for total violent crimes and total property crimes for the period 1998 to 2023. Over the long haul, the trends do not seem particularly concerning. The property crime rate in 1998 was 6,285 crimes per 100,000 population and after 2009 it began declining quite steadily followed by a spike in 2019 and then further decline. Between 1998 and 2023, the property crime rate fell from 6,285 crimes per 100,000 to 3,117 per 100,000 – a 50 percent drop.
Violent crime between 1998 and 2023 has also dropped but not by as much. It went from 2,401 violent crimes per 100,000 to 2,195 per 100,000 -a nearly 9 percent decline. However, the violent crime rate seems to be broken into two phases. It went from 2,401 in 1998 to a low of 1,414 in 2015 – a decline of 41 percent. Since 2015, it has grown and by 2023 was, as noted, at 2,195 – an increase of 55 percent. While violent crime is lower than 1998 that is small consolation given what appears to be a fairly rapid increase in recent years.
Figure 2 presents the percentage change in crime rates over a ten-year period – 2013 to 2023 – for a select number of crime categories. The results paint a more complicated picture. The total crime rates (all criminal code violations including traffic) are down 2.5 percent over the last ten years. This seems to be driven in part by a decline in property crimes as the total property crime rate over the same period is down 13.4 percent. However, over a ten-year period, the total violent crime rate is up nearly 39 percent. Homicides are up 120 percent from 2013 (though these are two points in time. Using a three-year moving average for 2012 and 2022, homicides are only up 87 percent if that makes you feel better). Total sexual assaults are up 68 percent while total assaults in general are up 31 percent. Impaired driving is up about 5 percent while robberies are up 39 percent.
So, are perceptions of rising crime justified? I would think so given that while overall crime rates might be down or flat, the rates for more serious crimes such as homicides, assaults and robbery are up. There you have it.