Pubdate: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2006 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Ian Mulgrew THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO LOOK AT CRIME STATISTICS Many Don't Call Police Because Stolen Goods Are Rarely Recovered Many people this week offered me a wealth of personal anecdotes to prove crime statistics don't tell the true story about disorder in Vancouver. Their responses, I think, are another manifest sign of the growing perception in the Lower Mainland that crime is a huge problem. "Our family has lived here for five generations," George W. Clarke said, offering a representative opinion of those who wrote or phoned me. "We are in the archives. My great-grandfather owned one of the first lumber mills here. My grandmother had the first official driver's licence in this city. My uncle had a general store down near the entrance to Stanley Park. My grandfather ran the Alvin logging camp on the north end of Pitt Lake. They all helped make this city what it eventually became. It was a great city, a clean city, and a safe city. You and I both know what it has now become." A cesspool, as far as he and most others were concerned. Many said the statistics only captured reported crime -- adding they have given up calling police because they rarely recover the stolen TV or the heirloom jewelry, and they won't fix the broken window where the thieves gained entry. Better to just deal with it and move on. Tom Stamatakis, president of the Vancouver Police Union, asked: "How do you reconcile what you point to as evidence of less crime and victimization with the public's perception that they are not safe? If in fact the evidence you point to, on its own, was a reliable measure of success then shouldn't the public generally feel safer and more confident that they would not become a victim of some type of criminal act in this city?" Good questions in the wake of my scoffing at Mayor Sam Sullivan's $1-million initiative to essentially tackle panhandling, street drug use and nuisance criminal offences. And they are especially germane, I think, in light of the recent discussion paper prepared for the B.C. Progress Board, Reducing Crime and Improving Criminal Justice in B.C., which made several recommendations for legal reform to address questions of public confidence in the system. And before I go on, let me set the record straight. In my column Monday, I mangled the name of the paper's primary author, Rob Gordon, director of the school of criminology at Simon Fraser University. I also managed to embarrassingly misidentify members of the progress board, wrongly including former attorney-general Geoff Plant, John Winter of the Chamber of Commerce, Mark Withenshaw of the Insurance Corporation of B.C., Provincial Court Chief Judge Hugh Stansfield, RCMP Supt. Marianne Ryan, deputy attorney-general Allan Seckel, and Robert Watts, provincial director of community corrections for the Solicitor-General's Ministry. As most were quick to let me know, they are not members of the progress board (18 senior business and academic leaders picked by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2001), but they were consulted in Gordon's research. I offer many apologies, as you can imagine, for my blunders. There was, however, a silver lining -- an opportunity for more discussion about disorder and whether it should be dominating our public policy agenda after a decade of plunging crime rates. Chief Judge Stansfield took the opportunity to say that in spite of the downward trends he, like Gordon, believes that too many people have adopted this popular pessimistic point of view. "There exists a lack of confidence in the justice system today," he said, "which we need to take seriously, because public confidence is ultimately the foundation of the rule of law. It is one of those instances in which perceptions themselves have their own reality, and impact." Gordon underscored that point in the report -- perception is a problem, partly because facts are difficult to find. "There are no data to settle the issue," he said. That's important, Gordon continued, and the crime justice commission the report recommends should deal with that as a top priority. Stansfield doesn't like the idea of the proposed commission. It "sounds dangerously like some body which would simply gobble up a lot of time and resources talking about the justice system, and delaying productive reforms." He thinks we could fix a lot of things much more quickly and buttress public confidence. For example, Stansfield said the system could do a better job of ensuring compliance with court orders and provide more accountability for offenders who breach such orders. He also believes we can speed up and simplify the criminal process to ensure offenders attend court far fewer times, cases appear before judges only when there is a substantive function for the judge to address, and cases that don't need to proceed to trial aren't scheduled. "We are currently actively engaged in addressing both those subject areas, on our own as a court, and in collaboration with the Ministry of the Attorney-General," Stansfield said. "I am cautiously optimistic that we will see real improvements over the next year or so." It's a good start. Still, I thought Stamatakis hit the nail on the head when he said: "I think if we are going to arrive at conclusions about crime in our community or if we are going to judge how people feel about their safety or disorder in the community then we should be taking a more comprehensive approach to determining what the answers are." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake