Crime in Canada and the United States

Crime in Canada and the United States

Introduction

Throughout human history, crime remains one of the main challenges that continue to face society, as both past and present interventions by the criminal justice system have failed to address this issue. In Canada and the United States, crime is affecting people and society in unimaginable yet predictable ways. Still, since the 2000s, emerging studies have suggested that the former is safer than the latter. However, in the book “Crime in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Analysis,” Marc Ouimet disputes this assertion with an effective analytic design that examines crime between the two countries. He argues that Canada can only have lower crime rates or be safer than the United States only if the national and regional variations and city size are not controlled, and overall, both have comparatively the same crime rates. Youth crime is evident in both Canada and the U.S, with minority racial groups increasingly disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Still, teenagers in the former are less involved in crime today owing to improvements in youth justice, deregulation, and the disproportionate representation of racial minorities.

In the book “Crime in Canada and the United States: A Comparative Analysis,” the author employs a remarkable analytical design to dispute the variations in crime between Canada and the United States. Researchers have made countless global comparisons of crime rates in the disciplines of sociology and criminology. Still, a significant issue facing these comparisons is the availability and reliability of crime data and information. In his narrative, the author employs comparable crime indicators. He uses four indicators, namely car theft, homicide, burglary, and robbery. These offenses are better indicators of crime in different countries compared to physical assault, and sexual assault as a majority is known by law enforcement. Moreover, the variations in legal meanings across nations are less significant than other types of criminal activity, such as drunk driving and fraud.

Furthermore, the author’s analytical design is also remarkable in the manner it addresses the challenge of incorporating the dark figure of criminal activity or the percentage of crimes that go unreported. He assumes a reasonably constant rate of non-reporting of crime because it does not represent a noteworthy issue for comparisons. Even if crime data and information for Canada and the U.S are scattered, there are no apparent reasons to believe the difference in reporting crime between nationals from the two countries. By assuming equal rates of reporting and the four common crime indicators, the author offers a vivid picture of crime in Canada and the U.S despite the comparative decline in crime since the 1990s.

A primary argument for the differences in crime rates between Canada and the U.S is cultural differences. Still, the author argues that if these cultural variations are real, and are related to crime rates, then differences in rates of crime are different from one type of crime to another. Since the onset of the 21^st century, the cultural differences between the U.S and Canada are blurring at a fast rate and owing to more than 90 percent of the latter living only 100 miles from the Canada-Us border, a distinct national character quickly disappearing. Moreover, the border is an official political boundary that dos not delineate vital cultural divisions. Besides, many value-based explanations of the variations in crime rates between the two nations do not acknowledge the truth of Canada’s two countries. Currently, English Canadians hold less liberal values than French Canadians, while Quebec enjoys comparatively low crime rates than the majority of Canadian provinces.

Apart from cultural differences, variations in crime rates between Canada and the U.S are explained by social inequalities and discrimination. Still, the state and nature of racial discrimination and social realities differ among these nations. In the U.S, Blacks and Hispanics have high murder rates that account for approximately half of Canada’s variations in homicide rates. In Canada, the author agrees the homicide rates of native Canadians are ten times more than white Canadians. Still, despite high crime rates amongst racial and ethnic minorities in the two countries, the different histories of the racial minorities make this assertion inconclusive. In the U.S, African Americans are immigrants, while in Canada, the native Canadians are indigenous people.

These groups have experienced different kinds of discrimination, and social actualities throughout history, which may explain high crime rates, but not the reasons behind participation in crime varies remarkably. An accurate comparison of crime amongst racial minorities such as Blacks in Canada and the U.S needs available and reliable crime data on these racial minorities. Canada does not classify murder rates based on ethnicity, which makes it difficult to compared crime rates between Blacks in the countries. Therefore, arriving at conclusions using immigrant and native crime data in the U.S and Canada respectively fails to offer a reliable and valid comparison of crime rates amongst racial and ethnic minorities in these countries.

Even though the author argues crime rates in the U.S and Canada are the same, the crime rate amongst Canadian youth is relatively low today owing to youth justice reforms. The replacement of the Youth Offenders Act with the Youth Criminal Justice Act in 2003 led to significant changes in youth crime rates. Zhang (2016) carried out a study to examine the responses of youth offenders to changes in sanctions using evidence contained in the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA).   The findings revealed that the changes were increasingly noteworthy for less severe crimes and insignificant for more severe crimes. In response to the changes in the certainty of juvenile sanctions under the act, less severe crime worsened while the trajectory of the evolution of more severe crimes was less clear.

According to Zhang (2016), these changes are possible because the YJCA has significantly reduced the custodial application sentences and youth courts and increased the application of extrajudicial measures for comparatively minor crimes. Moreover, the act removed deterrence from its sentencing purpose statement, as it believed deterrence was not the primary goal of juvenile sentencing in youth courts. Finally, the law stays tough on the sentencing of severe and violent minor crimes. For instance, it suggests adults’ sentences for the majority of grave youth crimes, but this is supplemented by the federal government that provides funding for intensive rehabilitative supervision and custody. Therefore, youth reforms explain why fewer Canadian youth are engaging in crime.

For instance, the deregulation of retail alcohol in Canada is not associated with an increase in crime rates across provinces in the country. Sen (2016) examined the effects of variations in local alcohol supply systems on the tendencies in per capita of property and violent crime rates and injury and fatality rates from automobile accidents. The findings revealed that per capita sales in alcohol did not increase in provinces where deregulation was enforced. The researcher concluded that regions, where retail liquor was deregulated, did not outperform provinces where it was regulated. In this regard, youth crime in Canada continues to decline in subsequent years.

On the disproportionate representation of racial minorities in the criminal justice system, the practice is evident in both the U.S and Canada. Still, discrimination and social realities do not explain this occurrence in the latter than the former. Carrington (2011) carried out a study to test whether differential minority contact (DMC) with law enforcement was the result of differential treatment of involvement owing to different risk factors. The findings indicated that there was a DMC because of either differential treatment or differential involvement due to risk factors. The researcher concluded that racially discriminative policies might partially explain DMC in the country. However, the history of Blacks in Canada is shorted compared to the U.S. As a result, racial discrimination and segregation play a noteworthy in DMC in the U.S than Canada.

In summary, crime has historically been a problem in Canada, and the U.S. Owing to the proximity between the countries’ crime comparisons between these two countries is standard, with the majority of studies agree crime rates in the latter are higher than the former. However, this is true if only adjustments for national and regional variations and city size are disregarded. As a result, crime rates in the U.S and Canada are notably among the youth, have remained comparatively the same. Still, the trend is changing as Canada embraces youth justice reforms, relaxes its laws, and fights against the disproportionate representation of racial minorities in the criminal justice system.

References

Fitzgerald, R. T., & Carrington, P. J. (2011). Disproportionate minority contact in Canada: Police and visible minority youth. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 53(4), 449-486.

Sen, A. (2016). Is retail alcohol deregulation correlated with more crime and traffic injuries? Evidence from Canadian provinces. Canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 58(2), 251-286.

Zhang, L. (2016). Are youth offenders responsive to changing sanctions? Evidence from the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act of 2003. Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’économique, 49(2), 515-554.