City’s Crime Rate Lowest In 14 Years, Despite Ranking
graph courtesy PG RCMP
Prince George, BC – While the Superintendent of the Prince George RCMP Detachment is giving weight to the city’s climb in a national ranking on violent crime, Eric Stubbs is ‘righting the scale’…saying both the crime rate and crime severity index are the lowest they’ve been in 14 years.
According to the latest Statistics Canada report on police-reported crimes, Prince George remained 14th in the country in terms of the overall Crime Severity Index, but climbed to 9th place in terms of violent crime in 2012 – up from 14th place the year before. "Obviously, it’s a concern," says the Prince George RCMP Superintendent, but he says the city’s crime rate and CSI have been consistently trending downwards since 1998.
Stubbs points out that the city’s overall CSI dropped five-percent last year from 2011. Great strides were also made on the non-violent Crime Severity Index, where the city dropped from 16th place to 20th. "We did see a significant drop which can be attributed to property crimes – from (a value of) 160 down to 145 – so that’s about a 10-percent drop," says Stubbs, who adds that there’s been a continued significant drop in property crimes for the first half of 2013, as well.
But the Superintendent isn’t trying to gloss over the cold, hard facts offered up in the latest ranking. While Stubbs says he expected the violent CSI value to increase because Prince George recorded two homicides in 2012, compared to none the previous year. He adds, "We’re too high, there’s no doubt about that."
For the past 12-months or so, the Prince George Detachment has had a focused, concerted effort on thwarting the city’s prolific offenders. That effort has impacted not only property crimes, says Stubbs, but violent crimes, as well. Other efforts include a Domestic Violence Unit that started last July. "That one-member unit has certainly made some in-roads into trying to help the most at-risk victims of our domestic violence – hopefully, getting them out of that dangerous situation to where they’re not victimized again."
"But to get success through statistics is sometimes difficult to see," says Stubbs. "Particulary on the domestic violence side, because what I hope is that some victims will see we actually have a unit here and we have other partnerships that we’ve now made where they can get some wraparound services – maybe they’ll come forward more than they would otherwise, so maybe our numbers will go up on the domestic violence side."
But Stubbs says, at the end of the day, being that high up in the rankings is concerning. "Whether we’re number one, or number 12, or number 20, it’s still clearly an issue."
"And it tells us that we have, particularly on the violent side, there’s an issue in this community that we have to focus on and work to improve."
Comments
Maybe the young Prince George can straighten this out!
Give him time.
Maybe he will abdicate from the throne when he cannot marry a divorced woman and move to his namesake city in the wilderness in a far away land and live like a lumber jack that his great granddaddy wrote to him about.
This is good news, and a good change. See that guys, it isn’t hard to actually post something relevant to the story.
All the little fella will ever learn about the city of PG is that the guy from Monty Python said it smells like a drain.
So based on that, it would appear that PG’s violent crime rate is not dropping as quickly as it is in other cities. Why is that?
Perhaps the fact that there is a higher crime rate in the west than in the east and in the north than in the south has something to do with it.
People in the west and north are more independent, pioneer types and thus less “civilized”.
There are many factors one has to look at to respond to a question like that.
The politically incorrect one will certainly be the First Nations factor. I do not think that can be ignored.
The other one which I think needs to be explored is the police force factor. RCMP versus independent police forces established by provinces and municipalities. The monopoly versus the independents. There might be more room to allow tackling problems from different perspectives. Sort of like open sourcing.
The dominance of the RCMP as one moves west and north should not go unnoticed, in my opinion. Then again, they also may have a tougher nut to crack in those areas. It is simply an observation and ought not to be discarded when coming up with some hypotheses.
Everything in this world is relevant. The potential segues to a “story” are virtually infinite when processed by the human brain, especially when the brain is caught in a brainstorm ….. ;-)
And I believe his granddaddy said we stir our coffee with our thumbs!
Poor little bugger, he has huge logging boots to fill!!!
perhaps the most simple analysis would be helpful … when dealing with small sample sizes (i.e. smaller populations), all changes in numbers tend to be distorted when compared to areas with larger sampling size …. and the distortion can be either way .. to the perceived better or worse .. the real story in the IMPROVEMENT :)
Things started getting better when Eric Stubbs appeared
Anotherside … the peaks and valleys will certainly spike more with smaller populations. That is well known.
The thing you have not mentioned is that as a result one has to be careful of which period one is looking at.
The period chosen is 1998 to 2012.
So we go with a crime rate of 18,847.9 to 16,085.5. Looks good, doesn’t it?
BUT, if we start with 1999, we start of with 16,968.3 …. Not that hot, is it?
So, the question I have, what was the crime rate prior to 1998? Did it drop over the previous 10 years to that, or did it rise over that time period?
And the real question that is still out there which NMG posed, why are some communities dropping at a faster rate than others, and we are not with the fat rate drops. THAT cannot be explained away with a small statistical database, only the more extreme spiking is explained with the population differences.
“Things started getting better when Eric Stubbs appeared”
Too small a time period to develop any significant data.
Unless, of course, you mean when he appeared before the media and gave his spin on things…. LOL
If the first nations can of worms is going to be opened then one also has to look at how the court deals with repeat offenders and the sentencing guidelines.
I realize that the percentage of first nations incarcerated far exceeds their percentage in the general population but the current situation is not working. Read the court lists and the same names keep popping up,making it clear that sentencing chronic offenders to sentences in the community does nothing to change their behavior.
Maybe it is time to move as many resources as possible, education, substance abuse,counseling etc from the community to the penal institutions. There you could deal with a “captive” group of clients and students and possibly cause some meaningful change. Want to get out early, work hard and get your GED or show substantial progress in substance abuse programs.
Was just on the news that in the new crime capital of Kelowna one person is responsible for 4% of reported incidents last year!!….why is this guy not behind bars?
Socio-Economic status has much to do with crime rates, for example everyone here know which Prince George neighbourhood has the highest crime rate in our city.
Show me a poor neighbourhood with a population of marginalized people and you have crime. As for this city being high on crime placing 9th in Canada, we are definitely not as rich as North Vancouver or Whistler, BC.
“According to research, criminals are more likely to commit crimes in their own neighbourhoods â or very similar neighbourhoods â than in wealthy communities they arenât familiar with, he said.”
Read more: http://www.nsnews.com/North+Shore+crime+rates+lowest+years/6996500/story.html#ixzz2a7794df7
I guess we are a community / city that criminals feel very comfortable committing crimes in ;-)
Police focus has changed from speeding tickets to crime control and let me tell you we really needed crime control. You do not get to be worst city in canada because of good policing. There is a difference being made in pg like it or not. And yes alcohol and drugs are at the root of the problem. It has nothing to do with race…clean up your act it is your own fault. Your problems will all go away if you kick the dependency.
“alcohol and drugs are at the root of the problem”
So Prince Phillip was right. A town of beer drinking lumbermen …..
The population of Prince George is to small to have such a consistent crime rate.
If we are in fact convicting criminals and putting them in jail, especially the so called prolific offenders, then at some point we should see a dramatic drop in the crime rate. Unless of course there is a corresponding number of new criminals coming to town.
More likely a large number of offenders are let off with lite sentences, and continue to break the law.
Once again we are faced with the dilemma of letting small time criminals go free, or paying huge dollars to put them in prison. You can rest assured that the Provincial Government has no stomach for picking up huge tab for incarcerating these people, and therefore the problem continues.
Not sure what the answer is, however the present system does not work, and hasn’t worked for a long time. Perhaps small time offenders should be given the choice of going to jail, or serving their sentences in their home town. Home Town being the place you were born. At least if they had that option we might get them out of Prince George for the length of time of their sentence. This way we could give a stiff sentence, with the option.
Im guessing that 80% of crimes in Prince George are committed by people who came from other areas.
Prince George being the only Major City outside of the lower mainland draws people from all over the Northwest, and of course with them come a certain percent of the criminal element.
Have a nice day.
Ha Ha ya i think so
I always thought money was the root of all evil, or at least the worship of money ;)
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