Crime statistics in Canada vs. US

[nico]

I'm in a debate on another board about why Canada has a lower crime rate than America. Of course, all the socialist Canadians (and the sheeple Americans) are convinced that it's somehow the guns' fault and that Americans are just violent trash. I remember a commonly cited statistic that areas in America and Canada with similar population densities have similar crime rates. Does anyone have a link or more info on this? I'd love to put a few feet in people's mouths, but nothing would be accepted as being remotely true without a link.

 

[AZRickD]

Ask your liberal debate buddies if they have seen Farenheit 911?

If they have, they would have heard Michael Moore himself say that Canada is loaded with guns. The difference is that the culture of Canada is not particularly violent. Their TV news doesn't have crime, crime, crime, crime on at 24 hours per day.

What Mikey glanced at but refused to analyze was that of race and urbanization.

Remember when he asked the producer of COPS (a self-described liberal) why he kept showing urban black guy after urban black guy getting roused, tackled, pepper sprayed and hand cuffed by cops night after night. The liberal producer was embarrassed when confronted with this, but he had to say that his job was to capture energetic police interactions and these happened to be in the ghetto, not on Wall Street.

If you remove the black inner city crime rate from the American mix, America looks a lot like Canada. In fact, rural blacks are much more commonly armed than their urban counterparts but are no more violent than rural whites.

The City. It makes ya crazy. Or, secondarily, dense urban populations lead to anonymity while increasing the chance of encounter with a potential victim.

Look at the case rates by population density for communicable diseases such as TB and HIV. Lots of chances to interact.

You'll find this with a few web searches. In the meantime, throw the above at your debate partners.

Rick

 

[CWatson]

Culture and denseness of population.There is alot of violent tendencies in Hispanic and Black cultures right now.Alot of crimes take place in densly populated cities,why?You got two guys who have a beef and you live 200 acres apart you do not run into each other everyday.You live in a apartment one above the other,and the two with the conflict running into each other all the time.

Japan may be the exception to this rule,but I understand they have more sexually motivated offenses there per capita.

How would you/we rate America's cultural violance? Everywere south of the border is more violent,most of asia is more violent,the whole African continant,the Middle East even the rare time when there may be no war going on is violent.This in a country were we have more freedoms than most.

It may be the luck of the draw but my wife's brother and a friend of his were both shot and wounded,the brother severly in Toronto earlier this year.

CW

 

[Stand_Watie]

To start with, I don't believe that Canada has a notably lower crime rate than the U.S. overall, I believe it is the homicide rate (and perhaps the rape rate) in the U.S. that stands out from Canada.

Secondly, I don't believe you want to pursue the track of claiming it is higher urbanization that accounts for the difference. It is a lot more complex than that. For example the city of Toronto has a lower homicide rate than the province of Ontario with Toronto excluded. Let me point you in the direction of two good papers on the issue.

The first is a section of Edgar Suter's 'Gun's in medical literature' where he explores differences in Seattle and Vancouver as a criticism of an anti-gun piece.

http://www.cely.com/firearms/medlit.html

The section is titled "Why are the Black and Hispanic homicide rates so high in Seattle?" and is approximately halfway down the webpage.

The second piece is A Statistical Comparison Of Homicide Rates In The Prairie Provinces And Four American Border States, 1978 - 1992

http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Gov/morrison2.html

here is one of the graphs. You can see quite clearly from the chart that Canada's much stricter gun control does not prevent a higher homicide rate than exists in the areas of the US that are the most similar to Canada. Incidentally, I've done the figures on upper New England and the upper peninsula of Michigan as well, and they are also right in the same ballpark with Canada's homicide rate.

 

[Brett Bellmore]

It's mostly just demographics. Some groups have lower murder rates than others, and there are more of the former here, and more of the latter there.

That, and shoveling snow helps work off agression.

 

[SDC]

Ditto; primarily demographics, with a vastly different mix in populations. When you compare like populations to like populations (for example, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) to the northern states that are directly across the border from them, the crime rates are no different, DESPITE the fact that those US states trust their citizens to own and carry firearms for self defence. When you try to compare the countries as a whole, it doesn't take into account the way that US murders are concentrated in a few demographic cohorts (notably young black and hispanic males), cohorts which are notably ABSENT in Canada. See http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/overseas.html#Seattle and Vancouver for the reason why US/Canada comparisons break down the way they do.

 

[nico]

hmm. . .
I can definitely see and agree with the point about demographics, but I'm trying to think of how to present it in a way that won't be called racist by all the bed wetting liberals over there. Thanks for the links everybody.

 

[buy guns]

just tell them that if they had an LA, chicago, detroit, gary, and NY then there crime rate wouldnt be so low.

 

[patentmike]

"I can definitely see and agree with the point about demographics, but I'm trying to think of how to present it in a way that won't be called racist by all the bed wetting liberals over there. "

See, when the American revolution started, only 2/3 of the population was on board. The wussy 1/3 moved to Canada. Now their overtaxed socialist decendants have an inferiority complex and are trying to convince themselves that they are safer being disarmed. Eh?

 

[SDC]

Is it "racist" to state an independently verifiable fact, ie. young black males between the ages of 14 and 24 commit HALF of all US murders? If Canada had a similar cohort, our murder rate would be as high as the US's, gun control or no gun control. As it is, the nearest segment in Canadian society with similar problems of poverty and drug and alcohol abuse is "native Canadians"/aboriginals/"indians", who make up less than 3% of the Canadian population, but commit an average of 20% of all our murders each year. If that group grew to the 12% that black Americans represent in the US population, our murder rate would grow correspondingly.

 

[nico]

i agree with you guys, but there are a couple people on the fence there. And coming out and saying that it has a lot to do with the black/hispanic population would be met with a sarcastic response like "yeah, lets round up all the *******. they're the ones who cause crime" and my point wouldn't be acknowledged or debated. I used the arguments you guys suggested (thanks for the links again), but I attributed it to "demographics" and let the links spell out the specifics.

 

[TallPine]

As it is, the nearest segment in Canadian society with similar problems of poverty and drug and alcohol abuse is "native Canadians"/aboriginals/"indians", who make up less than 3% of the Canadian population, but commit an average of 20% of all our murders each year.

That's about the way it is in Montana, too.

When you read an article about violence in the news, odds are better than 50-50 that the perp is named "Leonard Kills Enemy" or something.

That said, the tribes got a bum deal from the USA for the most part.

 

[Frohickey]

do a search

I remember having that type of debate over at forum.macrumors.com, in their forum section. Do a search on Frohickey, and I had posted UCR numbers for the US, as well as numbers for Canada. It was a pretty long thread.

As I remember it, the trend for the crime stats were on the decline in the US, and on the rise in Canada. So, Canada was getting worse.

Thread
canada stat
us stat

 

[Molon Labe]

Tell them this:

"It's no secret we have a lot of guns here in America. But are they to blame for our higher crime rate? I don’t know. And I don’t care. My right to keep and bear arms is inalienable, and the existence of this right is not contingent on "crime statistics." So even if guns did contribute to a higher crime rate - which I sincerely doubt is the case - it would have absolutely no bearing on our natural right to bear arms.

"I know this may sound cold, but I would rather have our crime rate stay exactly where it is than give up my right to keep and bear arms."

 

[Brett Bellmore]

I can definitely see and agree with the point about demographics, but I'm trying to think of how to present it in a way that won't be called racist by all the bed wetting liberals over there. Thanks for the links everybody.

Just tell them that Canada doesn't have "oppressed minorities revolting against the system". THAT they'd believe.

 

[AZRickD]

A new reality TV series:

"Thinking outside the box" with your host, Brett Bellmore.

 

[Standing Wolf]

I can definitely see and agree with the point about demographics, but I'm trying to think of how to present it in a way that won't be called racist by all the bed wetting liberals over there.

Save your breath: leftist extremists always scream, "Racism! Racism!" like the little boy who cried, "Wolf! Wolf!"

 

[utahminirevolver]

I have an interesting book, "Cities Ranked & Rated", more than 400 metropolitan areas in the US and Canada compared by Crime as well as Economy & Jobs, Cost of Living, Climate, etc. Published in 2004. Written by Bert Sperling & Peter Sander. Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Toronto's violent crime rate is 903. (See page 753).
Picking some US cities for comparison:
Dallas 697
Miami 1151
Detroit 744
Los Angeles 926
Chicago 893
Washington DC 508
New York 773
Boston 418
the US average 456

I was surprised when I read these numbers; not what the liberal media have been drilling into our heads all these years. Then again, I'd have thought DC and Detroit would be worse and Miami not as bad. I already knew that 'Toronto the Good' was history though, despite how the Liberals have been tightening up gun control in recent years and loosening up immigration and the justice system for decades. Or is it because of their policies?

"Violent crime rate" in this book means the combined incidence of murder, rape, robbery and assault per 100,000 residents per year. Their data comes from US Dept of Justice FBI Uniform Crime Reports and Canadian provincial averages from the 2000 Uniform Crime Reporting Survey.

 

[Art Eatman]

Pointing out the racial percentages and not being accused of racism is a matter of phrasing.

In any of my writing relating to inner-city ghetto homicide rates, I've referred to it as "tragic"--whichit is. I've pointed out that 2/3 of all blacks are middle economic class, yet suffer some negative attitudes because of a minority of all blacks. The same sort of thing holds for Latins. And, it's demonstrable fact that the violence relates to drugs; "violent drug dealers" are a small minority in any group.

What's the URL of that board?

Art

PS: Hi, Frohickey. The Desertrat is still hassling MacRumors.

 

[Ieyasu]

Nico,

You simply explain that race/ethnicity serves as a proxy for certain socio-economic factors.

Edit: You can see a breakdown here: http://guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvmurd.html#table1

 

[nico]

thanks for all the input. Art, the board is the "Out There" forum on clubsi. It can only be viewed by members and isn't worth joining just to see that thread. It's dead now anyway.

 

[Subliminal One]

Last time I checked the Interpol website, Canada has more overall volume of crime per capita. But the US was ahead in violent crime of course.

Places like France, Germany, UK, and Sweden also had more crime than the US.

 

[Frohickey]

Last time I checked the Interpol website, Canada has more overall volume of crime per capita. But the US was ahead in violent crime of course.

Places like France, Germany, UK, and Sweden also had more crime than the US.

Please, do not confuse crime per capita (crime per 100K, crime rate, etc) and total crime.

When you say Places like France, Germany, UK, and Sweden also had more crime than the US. the meaning of that is these places have more total crime than the US. For example, if there are 50K incidences of crime in France, and 49K incidences of crime in the US, that statement would be correct.

I doubt that France, Germany, UK and Sweden have more crime than the US. The US population is so much larger than these other countries.

 

[joe sixpack]

utahminirevolver posted:
Toronto's violent crime rate is 903. (See page 753).
Picking some US cities for comparison:
Dallas 697
Miami 1151
Detroit 744
Los Angeles 926
Chicago 893
Washington DC 508
New York 773
Boston 418
the US average 456
---------------


Heck, I think on a good day we get more than 926 violent crimes going down...

cheers, ab

 

[Stand_Watie]

I doubt that France, Germany, UK and Sweden have more crime than the US. The US population is so much larger than these other countries.

Certainly not. Comparing the US would require comparing most of Europe to get an equivalent population.

Sweden for example, only has about 9 million citizens, slightly smaller than the state of Michigan, if you were comparing total volume of crime you would want to compare with an area of equivalent size.