The Rise Of Violent Crime In Canada

Essay, Research Paper

The Rise of Violent Crime In Canada

Gavin R. Hemeon

Violent crime in Canada is on the rise in Canada as well as the types of

violent crimes being committed against the public. It has been on the rise for

many, many years. I believe and intend to prove in the following essay that it

is societies responsibility for the rise of violent crime with their

unwillingness and inability to effectively deal with the current trend in our

society. In the last few years, a slight dip in violent crime has been noted,

but we must view this with skepticism as no official statistics are available.

As well as this could be an example of society realizing that the Criminal

Justice System is not effectively dealing with the trend of violence in Canada.

This would be true by way of the fact that people are not reporting these crimes

to the police. Generally all the statistics that are gathered and used by the

police are based upon reported crime and no conjecture on unreported crime is

included in these official statistics.

To fully understand what violent crime is, we must first define what

violent crime is in actuality. All to often, people in Canadian society refer to

general wrongdoing as being a crime. A simple example of this is when grocery

stores all raise their prices for certain food products. People then refer very

casually to this act as a crime or that these prices are criminal. Individuals

in our Society often have a fear of being victimized by others, such as the

government, friends and or strangers. This fear is often equated with crime

since all crimes have a winner and a loser or victim as would be the legal term.

This equation often makes involvement in these acts of “crime” a personal thing.

Which results in stronger feelings and sometimes irrational thinking towards the

whole subject of crime. Many times people are not reporting these crimes

because it is their duty in a society to help uphold the laws of ones society.

In actuality, they are reporting the crime for needed compensation whether it be

for medical costs or lost wages. Another reason some people report crimes is

because they are doing it as an avenging act to extract a revenge they could not

otherwise get for themselves. This is a main reason in the fact that police

officers need to investigate reported crimes and determine if a crime had

actually been committed or not. The crimes which are considered to be violent

crimes and which I am focusing on, I shall list next. Any form of an assault on

the person, ranging from sexual assault to Aggravated assault. Robbery,

Homicide, Attempted Homicide, and Manslaughter are all considered violent crimes.

These crimes are committed for a variety of reasons that range from

unbelievable to incredible. Some are done for fun, having no real reason at all.

Anger is a major reason for assaults being committed as well as Homicides.

Robbery of a store or mugging of an individual is another reason. As well as

pure pre-meditated violence, whether it is a beating or a murder, people use

violence to enforce other things that are considered to be valued reasons for

violence. In fact many sub-cultures of Canadian culture, such as gangs have

developed differing views on crime and see the act of assaulting another

individual as a way of settling a dispute and/or argument. A more technical

definition would be as follows;

” a crime involves the violation of a norm. Norms are social rules

ranging from the important and the binding to the less important and optional.

From which society makes attempts and rules to regulate behaviour in society ”

The Importance of the laws are measured by the level of punishments imposed upon

the offender and the sanctions in place against the law. An example of this is

lying and skipping class are considered to be minor infractions, where as murder

is considered to be one of the most atrocious acts that could be committed by a

person.

Since the beginning of Canada, that is to say its formation as a dominion,

there has always been a crime rate for the population. Fluxations and

statistics have been recorded about the happenings of crime in Canadian culture.

These statistics have long been studied by Sociologists and other well known

scholars. The crime rate of 1867 and 1987 are just as different as the cultures

of the two different time periods are different. But an interesting correlation

has been noted with the crime rates of 1939-1938 and 1980-1988. But the rates

of violent crime that this paper is focusing on are in the recent years. In

1962 the crime rate in Canada was 221 incidents per 100,000 people which rose to

1099 per 100,000 people in 1991. The highest rate of violent crime in Canada in

1991 was in the North West Territory and was at a rate of 6,294 per 100,000

people and the lowest rate was in Prince

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