Crime in Canada

Under the Canadian constitution, the power to establish criminal law and rules of investigation is vested in the federal Parliament. The provinces share responsibility for law enforcement (although provincial policing in many jurisdictions is contracted to the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police), and while the power to prosecute criminal offences is assigned to the federal government, responsibility for prosecutions is delegated to the provinces for most types of criminal offences. Laws and sentencing guidelines are uniform throughout the country, but provinces vary in their level of enforcement.

Crime since the 1980s

Canada's growing multi-ethnic society in the 1980s introduced new organized crime groups that competed with the Mafia, marking a growth in crimes such as drug trafficking, gambling, loansharking, migrant smuggling, cigarette smuggling, liquor smuggling and prostitution. The Rizzuto-Caruana-Cuntrera Italian Mafia families lost ground in cocaine and heroin smuggling to Iranian and Chinese gangs, Colombian cartels and outlaw biker gangs starting in the mid-1970s. Chinese gangs smuggled heroin through airports in the 1970s and shifted toward cargo containers entering Vancouver around 1985. By 2001, the RCMP estimated up to 15 metric tons of cocaine reaching Canada annually.

Illegal immigrants from Asia to the US frequently enter through Canada and lower criminal penalties tended to favor drug smuggling. In particular, Canada did not criminalize the possession of precursor chemicals for drugs like methamphetamine. After the 1970s, synthetic drugs overtook liquor as the main item smuggled into the US and by the 1990s Canada supplied large amounts of high-grade marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine. Quebec mobsters, relocated to Florida, maintained two large pill making operations in Quebec from 1981 to 1986, shipping 13.5 million methaqualone tablets to the US. By the early 2000s, Canada was a net exporter of marijuana to US, although comprised only one-fifth the amount coming from Mexico. A pound valued at $2000 in Vancouver would sell for as much as $6000 in California.

Gerald Matticks, a major leader in the Irish West End Gang in Quebec was suspected by police as the smuggler behind two large hashish shipments captured in 2000, but an investigation of the Quebec Hells Angels uncovered his name in documents. Spreadsheets indicated that the Hells Angels owed $7 million to Matticks for cocaine and hashish, leading to his arrest and conviction.

Legalized gambling shrank the illegal gambling market in Canada after the 1970s. However, a 1996 report found that illegal gambling in Ontario was a $10 billion industry and in 1999 the Illegal Gaming Enforcement Unit was created by the province, bringing 941 gambling charges against 623 people. Video lottery machines are often used illegally by the Italian mafia, Chinese and Russian gangs, as well as the Hells Angels. As many as 25,000 machines were believed to be distributed in Southern Ontario in 1996.

Tobacco smuggling grew rapidly after the Canadian government increased the excise tax on cigarettes 140 percent. By 1993, there were as many as 100 million contraband cartons circulating in the country. However, the government did not impose penalties on cigarettes for export and many exported cigarettes were brought back into the country. A joint sting operation netted Larry Miller, who had earned $687 million between 1992 and 1996, enough to afford a Learjet to go between Las Vegas and Massena, New York, where cigarettes were smuggled through the Akwasasne reservation—which because of its cross-border nature, lacked border security. The Mohawk Warrior Society, famous for the 1990 Oka standoff had launched into tobacco and migrant smuggling beginning around 1988. Due to smuggling, the government lowered cigarette taxes in 1994. However, high liquor duties—at 80 percent of the price, rather than 40 in the US—led to significant liquor smuggling.

Smuggling demands drove corruption among baggage handlers at Toronto Pearson airport, prompting an audit of 131,000 airport workers after 4500 were found to have ties to bikers gangs and organized crime, in 2004.

After 1983, migrant smuggling increased rapidly. Cheng Chui Ping, a Chinese grandmother from Fujian province orchestrated a major "Snakehead" smuggler gang, transporting thousands of people in the 1990s. Between 1994 and 2003, 15,000 Chinese people entered Canada illegally. In March, 2000 the RCMP infiltrated a large prostitution ring that had smuggled in 280 Korean women to work as forced laborers in massage parlors. The federal government in 1998 opted to exempt exotic dancers from restrictions on working in Canada, helping to drive prostitution. ^[2]

Statistics Canada data

Canadian Criminal Cases collection

The province with the lowest crime rate in 2006 for the third straight year was Ontario with 5,689 per 100,000, followed by Quebec with 5,909 per 100,000. The province with the highest crime rate for the 9th straight year was Saskatchewan with 13,711 per 100,000. Regina is the city with the highest crime rate followed by its provincial counterpart Saskatoon. Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, and Saguenay have the lowest crime rates of any city and are all located in Quebec.^[3] Winnipeg has had the highest violent crime rate since 2009 and still held it in 2012. For years native Canadian women have been victims of sexual assault and murder disproportionately often and there have been complaints that the police paid insufficient attention to the problem.^[4] The three northern territories have higher per capita crime rates than any province. As evidenced by the crime map above right, Saskatchewan has a higher crime rate than the other Canadian provinces, but lower than the territories.

The number of murders dropped to 594 in 2007, 12 fewer than the previous year. One-third of the 2007 murders were stabbings and another third were by firearm. In 2007, there were 190 stabbings and 188 shootings. Handguns were used in two-thirds of all firearm murders. Seventy-four youths were accused of murder, down 11 from the previous year. About eighty-four percent of murders were done by someone known to the victim. Male victims of homicide were most likely to be killed by an acquaintance, someone known to them through a criminal relationship, or a stranger. Female victims of homicide were most frequently killed by a current or former intimate partner, or another family member. The province with the highest crime rate was Manitoba while the lowest crime rates occurred in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Police reported criminal violence is thought to be an undercount of actual violence rates. Thus, approximately every five years, Statistics Canada conducts a survey of victimization in Canada. The last General Social Survey conducted was in 2004, where 24,000 people were contacted by telephone: 106 reported incidents of violence per 1,000 polled, which is slightly lower than in 1999 when it was 111 per 1,000 polled.^[5]

Crime by region

Police

Map of Police per 100,000 population across Canada, 2012.^[17]

  < 176

  176-200

  201-300

  301-400

  > 400

In 2005, there were 61,050 police officers in Canada which equates to one police officer per 528.6 persons, but with significant regional variations.^[18] Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island have the fewest police per capita with 664.9 and 648.4 persons per police officer, respectively. Conversely, the highest ratio of police to population is found in Canada's northern territories; Nunavut has 247.9 persons per police officer, the Northwest Territories has 248.5 persons per officer and the Yukon has 258.2 persons for each police officer.^[19]

That is a substantially lower rate than most developed countries with only Japan and Sweden having so few police officers. The United States has one officer per 411.5 persons, and Germany 344.8.

Canada's national police force is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which is the main police force in Canada's north, and in rural areas except in Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland. Those three provinces have their own provincial police forces, although the RCMP still operate throughout rural Newfoundland and also provide specific federal policing services in Ontario and Quebec. Many cities and districts have their own municipal police forces, while others have contracts with the provincial police or RCMP to police their communities.

Punishment

Canada abolished the death penalty for murder in 1976,^[22] instituting a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for murder.

In 2001, Canada had about 32,000 people in prison or about 0.13% of the total population. Globally, the United States was the country with the highest percentage of inmate population (about 0.7% of the total population). The European average is 0.2% of the total population, with France and Germany having lower rates than Canada, but with the United Kingdom, Spain and most of Eastern Europe having higher ones.

Comparisons

Comparing crime rates between countries is difficult due to the differences in jurisprudence, reporting and crime classifications. National crime statistics are in reality statistics of only selected crime types. Data are collected through various surveying methods that have previously ranged between 15% and 100% coverage of the data. A 2001 Statistics Canada study concluded that comparisons with the U.S. on homicide rates were the most reliable. Comparison of rates for six lesser incident crimes was considered possible but subject to more difficulty of interpretation. For example, types of assaults receive different classifications and laws in Canada and the U.S., making comparisons more difficult than homicides. At the time, the U.S. crime of aggravated assault could be compared to the sum of three Canadian crimes (aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and attempted murder). This comparison had a predicted bias that would inflate the Canadian numbers by only 0.1%. The study also concluded that directly comparing the two countries' reported total crime rate (i.e. total selected crimes) was "inappropriate" since the totals include the problem data sets as well as the usable sets.^[23] For reasons like these, homicides have been favored in international studies looking for predictors of crime rates (predictors like economic inequality).

See also

• Crime Stoppers
• Block Parent Program
• Gangs in Canada
• Political scandals in Canada
• Computer crime in Canada
• Terrorism in Canada
• Department of Justice (Canada)

References

Further reading

External links

• Correctional Service Canada (commonly called Corrections Canada) administers federal prisons and parole boards.
• Crime comparisons between Canada and the United States
• Black markets in Canada