Notes &
“In the future, if you’re wondering, ‘Crime. Boy, I don’t know’ is when I decided to kick your ass.” - President Bartlet, West Wing
Using unreported crimes to justify spending a tonne o’ dough ($9 billion) on new prisons puzzles me. Sure, StatsCan data (Crime and Victimization Survey) do show that only 34 per cent of crimes are reported (compared to 37 per cent in 1999, and 42 per cent in 1993) but overall reported crimes statistics are improving.
Even if you buy the argument that ‘unreported’ crimes are on the rise, and that official crime statistics can’t really be trusted, how does this justify a massive prison building regime? Building more prisons isn’t the magic bullet that will incent people to report more crimes. I’m no crime expert, but I have done some reading on the subject - my understanding is that many unreported crimes fall into several categories: minor property crimes (your car gets broken into, and a few loonies are stolen) and minor assaults (bar brawlz); criminal on criminal crime (a police friend told me that 90 per cent of home invasions are drug related - and many go unreported); sexual assaults and domestic disputes (very serious issues, but hardly solved by prisons.)
So yeah, I’m scratching my head a little bit.
Addressing unreported crime is a valid public policy issue to pursue; the New York experience in the 1990s shows that addressing minor, petty crimes can help reduce major crime; and, it is difficult to argue against getting at the root causes of unreported domestic and sexual assaults. I just think the policy prescription Mr. Day is holding up - prison building - hardly addresses the issue of unreported crime.
Calling a spade a spade, I think he was getting grilled by the media in what he and his aides expected to be a sleepy summer media conference; he was shaken off his talking points, and pulled some stats from his briefing book.
I only wish the unreported crime data were taken from the long-form census - that would have made my week.
