Is Crime Really Down?

[Guest TrueMetis]

You keep going on about people who do recreational drugs allegedly with no problems. Aside from the fact I think that is bullshit, people get into problems using prescription drugs legally obtained, you ignore the organized criminals they get their drugs from. I'm not a criminal, nothing to do with me if my supplier just blew a competitors head off to get my business.

So you think Health Canada is lying? Because that's what I linked to and it states in the first sentence. Also these drugs include prescription drugs, it not all weed, coke, and meth.

The majority of adult Canadians use some type of mood-altering drug, though most do not experience problems or misuse drugs.

And of course the whole organized crime thing is solved by making these drugs legal but controlled because as Health Canada says.

most do not experience problems or misuse drugs.

That might contribute rather largely to the increased crime rate, criminals have been made out of people who wouldn't and shouldn't be if it wasn't for some very stupid laws.

[wyly]

Really? And so how does any of what you have said negate my point? Oh, that's right, it doesn't. Like I said, the idea that people report less crime than before is absolutely preposterous, given the ease of making a report and the societal support for the victim as opposed to any time in the past.

What you've told me about are personal anecdotes....and that's what you always use in arguments. You then go on to lecture others about their lack of facts and logic. It's rather rich.

I'll use my own anecdote. I have personally been involved with a hostage situation, an assault, several vandalisms, and several robberies. All of them were reported. Every single one.

I've been the victim of assualt, vandalism and robbery and none were reported...want to see your insurance rates go up report a couple of instances of vandalism or B&E's..more sex crimes today are reported than they were when I was young, convictions for sex crimes were rare and the ordeal was worse for the victim than the accused so it's not surprising they weren't reported...

[wyly]

Back then, most people didn't do recreational drugs other than alcohol. No one did chemical drugs and few smoked pot. I am a leading edge boomer, my sister is four years younger. Her age group was into stuff that few even considered in my age group. That's how fast things changed. We weren't any better than them, the stuff just wasn't around. I can see how people born in the seventies and eighties would find that hard to believe. I would to but that is the way it was.

You keep going on about people who do recreational drugs allegedly with no problems. Aside from the fact I think that is bullshit, people get into problems using prescription drugs legally obtained, you ignore the organized criminals they get their drugs from. I'm not a criminal, nothing to do with me if my supplier just blew a competitors head off to get my business.

Drugs are a factor in most of todays crime whether it is organized crime, crimes committed by addicts to feed their habits and everything in between. Ask any criminologist.

I dunno Wilber I think it was matter of where you grew up and lies people tell...like the lie that our grandparents never had sex before marriage but it's all BS...drugs and risky behaviour has always been with us, pot has been smoked for centuries, cocaine was popular in the 19th and early 20th century as was heroin and legal as well...

I'm probably close to your age an early boomer and in my experience there was no shortage of drugs in high school, pot, heroin, LSD, Mushrooms it was all there and in plentiful supply and I'm sure it was around before my day as well....

[nicky10013]

So the government legislating locking steering colums, alarm systems and immobilizers on all new cars was completely unnecessary and insurance companies are also out to lunch because they give you discounts for car immobilzers and monitored home alarm systems. The obviously don't have a clue what they are doing.

The government doesn't legislate those things. I don't know about locking steering columns but immobilizers and alarm systems certainly aren't standard.

As for monitored home alarm systems, the insurance company gives the discount more for fire than theft.

Like I said, if crime rates had to do with alarm sales, they'd be going down, not up.

[Mansour Mohammed Jaffa]

Crime is ever on the rise in the West. Blasphemy, adultery, immodesty. Where are the stonings? How can you let such shame go unpunished?

[Jack Weber]

Crime is ever on the rise in the West. Blasphemy, adultery, immodesty. Where are the stonings? How can you let such shame go unpunished?

You're running out of material are'nt you,Licky?

[Wild Bill]

I dunno Wilber I think it was matter of where you grew up and lies people tell...like the lie that our grandparents never had sex before marriage but it's all BS...drugs and risky behaviour has always been with us, pot has been smoked for centuries, cocaine was popular in the 19th and early 20th century as was heroin and legal as well...

I'm probably close to your age an early boomer and in my experience there was no shortage of drugs in high school, pot, heroin, LSD, Mushrooms it was all there and in plentiful supply and I'm sure it was around before my day as well....

My grade 13 was in 1970. Just for fun my friends and I did a fast count one day of all our fellow classmates who we knew for sure smoked pot. No guesses were allowed. They had to be known for certain.

The total was within a few decimal points of 80%!

It's certainly possible that schools in other parts of the country could have different cultures and different numbers. Certainly there were a couple of christian schools in our area that might have had different attitudes. Or maybe not! My school was here in southern Ontario. Perhaps B.C may have had a higher number!

In the culture of those times pot was absolutely accepted! TV shows took it as a given that mainstream youth considered pot smoking to be a safe and fun recreation. Not just shows like the Smothers Brothers or Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in but sitcoms and dramas. The exceptions would be Lawrence Welk, Singalong with Mitch (Miller) and others geared for a MUCH older audience. One significant exception would be "Dragnet", who choose to make the issue almost an inside joke by presenting young folks as "caricature hippies". The detectives would knock on a door and a young girl in a mini-skirt would answer. The girl would also be carrying a large sign shaped like a flower with the word "LOVE" in large letters. As if she was walking around her home with it!

Music and FM radio both had drug references as a given - AM radio not so much.

Like any popular culture the youth of the time tended to socialize with those who shared the same beliefs. Young folks are likely a stronger expression of this. You didn't have to smoke pot yourself to be accepted but if it was known that you strongly objected to it your circle of friends tended to be much smaller and more similar to each other. In our school the 20% was largely made up of kids from a much more conservative or even evangelical upbringing and they tended to keep to their own. It would be understandable for those kids today to have a different impression of those times, never having experienced anything different.

The more "fundamentalist" minority always seems somehow to believe that they actually represent some kind of "silent majority". Consider how when Stockwell Day became leader of the Alliance Party and almost immediately started pushing many of his evangelical beliefs. He and his supporters obviously didn't realize that they were NOT mainstream! Harper had warned the party some years earlier that they should not mix religion with the politics and look at the party as a vehicle for expressing religious values. He flat out told them it could literally trigger a voter backlash from mainstream Canada that could leave the party in ruins. Stockwell and his supporters didn't listen and Manning's movement was severely derailed. Kinsella's "Barney the Dinosaur" stunt was brilliant, if a bit cruel. Still, Day and his people didn't just ask for it, they begged!

Anyhow, of course this is just observation from my own personal experience and therefore anecdotal. This means that it probably never happened or happened completely differently. I guess Cheech and Chong never sold any albums. Firesign Theater either. I'm sure there are many old enough to recognize and agree with my recollections but again, be prepared to accept that it was all a (forgive the pun!) pipe dream!

[eyeball]

Yeah, but you're completely ignoring the fact that. despite the rates in the 60s, crime has been falling for 20 years. We must be doing something right, no?

It's probably because we're doing something left.

Edited August 7, 2010 by eyeball

[Wilber]

The government doesn't legislate those things. I don't know about locking steering columns but immobilizers and alarm systems certainly aren't standard.

As for monitored home alarm systems, the insurance company gives the discount more for fire than theft.

Like I said, if crime rates had to do with alarm sales, they'd be going down, not up.

LINK

Yes they give alarm system discounts for fire and theft. Are you now saying theft is not a crime?

[Argus]

Whether you have the wit to understand that you're proving my point or not, you're still proving my point. You're taking A - the crime rate and B - the amount of people buying alarm systems and thinking they must automatically be connected when I doubt their connection would be statistically significant. Because really, if it was tied to crime rates, sales would be falling because that's what the crime rates have been doing for 20 years, completely contradicting your statement.

Indeed, I'd wager that the sale of home alarm systems and the REPORTING of crime in the media would be statistically significant.

No, I think what might be driving it is the fact that home break ins remain extremely high by historical standards, and that new factors have risen over the past some years. One of those factors is the violent home break-in - completely unknown in this country only a few years back. Another is the unfortunate tendency of some teenage burglars to not be satisfied with making off with the family's electronic devices and jewelery, but to get their rocks off with massively expensive vandalism.

I'm not terribly concerned someone will break into my house while I'm away and steal my computer and TV. I'm more concerned they'll break in while I'm here, or that they'll break in and smash everything in sight, requiring tens of thousands in repairs.

[DogOnPorch]

[good post]

Anyhow, of course this is just observation from my own personal experience and therefore anecdotal. This means that it probably never happened or happened completely differently. I guess Cheech and Chong never sold any albums. Firesign Theater either. I'm sure there are many old enough to recognize and agree with my recollections but again, be prepared to accept that it was all a (forgive the pun!) pipe dream!

Weren't they just awesome? Giant Rat of Sumatra!

Young Guy: I'm looking for the Same Old Place...

Old Timer: You mean the Old Same Place...yeah I knows it.

[Argus]

You people are focusing on the wrong arguments. It's not whether reported crime rates are rising or falling but whether crime itself is at an acceptable level, and is being policed and dealt with in an acceptable manner.

Many of us believe neither is true. Crime is far higher than it used to be when we were younger, regardless of whether it has fallen off from its peak, and more vicious types of crimes have arisen which frighten people more and get reactions. I regard the present rate of crime, particularly but not limited to, violent crime, as unacceptable. I regard the system which seeks to combat crime as failing badly. In my city, only 16% of REPORTED crimes are ever solved. For those of you not up on math, since only about 1/3rd of crimes are ever reported, that means something like 5 out of every 100 crimes winds up resulting in an arrest. In clearer language, 95% of crimes are never punished at all.

When a person is arrested, they enter the lottery we call a "justice" system. In most cases they will be bailed almost immediately, often to go back to committing crimes until their trial or a plea bargain or other resolution. If they violate the terms of their bail, by, say, getting arrested again, they'll probably be bailed out again anyway. There is no punishment for violating your bail conditions in Canada, after all. Eventually, they might or might not wind up actually spending a little time in jail, but for the most part, probably not much.

Everything I've stated is fact, as opposed to opinion. And yet, even so, the idiots on the Left will whine and snivel and throw up condescending excuses about why crime - because it's seen by them as a Conservative Party issue, is not at all important and should be dismissed out of hand as nothing more than political manipulation carried out by evil neo cons.

[wyly]

My grade 13 was in 1970. Just for fun my friends and I did a fast count one day of all our fellow classmates who we knew for sure smoked pot. No guesses were allowed. They had to be known for certain.

The total was within a few decimal points of 80%!

Anyhow, of course this is just observation from my own personal experience and therefore anecdotal. This means that it probably never happened or happened completely differently. I guess Cheech and Chong never sold any albums. Firesign Theater either. I'm sure there are many old enough to recognize and agree with my recollections but again, be prepared to accept that it was all a (forgive the pun!) pipe dream!

well i grew up in the heart of the praries in small city in the same time period...my public high school drugs and sex were commonplace (there were even sex competitions) as it was with my friends at the catholic highg school down the road...and sharing experiences with later friends from small rural communities it was no different out in the boonies...so I guess as you suggested it depends on who you hang with...and I don't think we were any different than previous generations we were just more open about it...

[capricorn]

Crime is ever on the rise in the West. Blasphemy, adultery, immodesty. Where are the stonings? How can you let such shame go unpunished?

Come now, Mr. Jaffa. I'm sure you meant America and not the West. You must be relieved that you don't reside in the immoral US or decadent Canada, eh?

[Wilber]

My grade 13 was in 1970. Just for fun my friends and I did a fast count one day of all our fellow classmates who we knew for sure smoked pot. No guesses were allowed. They had to be known for certain.

That would put you in the same age category as my sister. All I am saying is that things were quite different for the group just four of five years before. There has always been drug use but the type we have now and the crime surrounding it had its beginnings in the late sixties. Not to say there weren't drugs or drug crime before but designer or chemical drugs were rare in the early sixties and unheard of during the fifties. Amphetamine use was almost entirely medical before the sixties. It did have a beginning and it wasn't that long ago.

My wife used to run an office for a janitorial supply warehouse and she was always having shady guys with no ID coming in and paying cash for large quantities of 99% iso alcohol and other chemicals. Perfectly legal in BC but she knew damn well what they were being used for. You just hope you don't live in the same neighbourhood as their lab.

Prescription drugs are an issue on their own. We now have a pill for everything and think we need a pill for anything. There were few antidepressants back then and few people using them. Now every third commercial on US TV is some drug company urging you to demand your doctor give you whatever it is they are flogging to take your cares away. OxyContin is a perfect example of this philosophy run amok. You have pharmacies posting big signs that they don't keep the stuff on site and even vets have to be careful of what they stock and how they keep it. If a pharmacy was broken into back then, chances are the thieves were after opiates, serious pain killers, now they have a whole smorgasbord of stuff to go after.

That's what I mean about a drug society.

[Wild Bill]

That would put you in the same age category as my sister. All I am saying is that things were quite different for the group just four of five years before. There has always been drug use but the type we have now and the crime surrounding it had its beginnings in the late sixties. Not to say there weren't drugs or drug crime before but designer or chemical drugs were rare in the early sixties and unheard of during the fifties. Amphetamine use was almost entirely medical before the sixties. It did have a beginning and it wasn't that long ago.

Minor correction. My high school period was 66-71 and "speed freaks" were quite common, so your time line is late by at least 5 years. Likely 1960 would have been the start of that trend.

It was interesting that the majority of my crowd had very little respect for speed freaks and considered them to be idiots who were going to harm themselves. Drugs were of two classes - 'head' stone and 'body' stone. Head drugs were marijuana and mild LSD. Body stone drugs were alcohol, speed, and such. There was much prejudice against other kids who were just into body stones.

The main difference was that head drugs were thought to 'expand your mind' while body stone drugs just screwed you up physically and clouded your head, like being drunk on alcohol or paranoid and jittering on speed. Most interesting was the idea that the more experienced you were at smoking pot the less you needed to achieve the same mental high. In effect, a negative tolerance where experience meant you needed less!

It was all centred around creativity. Young people in those times were all playing guitar, doing art and writing reams of mostly very bad poetry. Apartments would be universally decorated with macrame arrangements. Most of it was drivel and very pretentious but the overall result was a very creative time, as witness to the explosion of new and varied pieces of music and later the computer wave. I worked with those cats at Intel, National SemiConductor, Texas Instrument and many others in the micocomputer and integrated circuit industry and they were almost ALL older hippies! They were a very creative and eclectic bunch. We wouldn't be communicating through this medium if it hadn't been for them!

Culturally, things began to drastically change with the drug scene in the mid 70's. Body stone became more desired and head stone was a forgotten term. I would go to a party and see some high school kid smoke more pot in one sitting than we used to do in a year!, pass out in a corner to wake up hours later, shaking his head and groggily commenting on what a wonderful party it had been! High levels of consumption and stronger drugs seemed to be the new goals.

Perhaps those of you who also lived those times can confirm if my experience was just a local phenomenon or if it was the same in your part of the country.

Anyhow, that's about the time that this old hippy retired and hung up his Foghat albums! Without the head stones, the macrame and even the bad poetry it was just no longer any fun.

Edited August 7, 2010 by Wild Bill

[Wilber]

Minor correction. My high school period was 66-71 and "speed freaks" were quite common, so your time line is late by at least 5 years. Likely 1960 would have been the start of that trend.

Might well have been the start but it wasn't widespread till later on. I finished high school in 64 and saw very little of it.

[Argus]

It's probably because we're doing something left.

As far as I'm aware no one has been able to show that falling crime rates have anything whatsoever to do with government policy. They're entirely due to the falling rate of young men in the population.

[Wild Bill]

Weren't they just awesome? Giant Rat of Sumatra!

"How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?"

[wyly]

Might well have been the start but it wasn't widespread till later on. I finished high school in 64 and saw very little of it.

it would depend on how aware you were and if you were trusted, I friends whose older siblings were already dealing in the early sixties, at the time I had no idea what that meant...when I started highschool I was blissfully unaware not until my 2nd year was I aware of something going on, wads of cash being exchanged in the bathrooms for bags, blotters and little foil wrapped things, not until I was trusted by the important people did find out what was going on...there kids who went all through highschool and had no idea of the others who lived in a completely different world culturally were up to...

[Wilber]

it would depend on how aware you were and if you were trusted, I friends whose older siblings were already dealing in the early sixties, at the time I had no idea what that meant...when I started highschool I was blissfully unaware not until my 2nd year was I aware of something going on, wads of cash being exchanged in the bathrooms for bags, blotters and little foil wrapped things, not until I was trusted by the important people did find out what was going on...there kids who went all through highschool and had no idea of the others who lived in a completely different world culturally were up to...

These days it is common knowledge and all over the place. So things have changed.

[Wild Bill]

These days it is common knowledge and all over the place. So things have changed.

My daughters have both told me that there was pretty well any drug you wanted freely available - at their elementary school! Everybody knew who the 'stoners' were that could sell you something and what the cost. The teaching staff seemed blissfully unaware, to the immense amusement of the kids!

Once or twice a year a policeman would come in and give the standard 'anti-drug' speech. Apparently the police had learned nothing since I was in school over 40 years earlier. They described the effects of marijuana straight from the 'Reefer Madness' movie and then insisted it was a gateway drug that would hook virtually everyone of them onto heroin very quickly.

Sadly, the kids all knew this was BS but it weakened the very valid cautions about harder drugs. Thankfully, my daughters and most of their friends were already very streetwise enough to understand the real dangers, despite the silliness of 'Deputy Dan'.

I was rather dismayed when one young fellow got expelled for dealing some pretty dangerous stuff. I found out that being expelled didn't mean what I thought it meant. He just went to the next school over, where he just resumed dealing to a new market! I'm not sure if it's possible to be expelled in the fashion us old farts remember anymore.

[Molly]

While you guys are having your rosy jaunt down memory lane, try to remember a charge of rape, of domestic violence, assault... try to remember charges ever being laid against a child molester.

The acts were common enough, but the culture of the day was to keep it to onesself.

[Jerry J. Fortin]

I really wish our society would become more involved in politics. In order to protect ourselves we need to protect each other, and to do that we need to work together. Politics is no place for children, and we all need to grow up.

[nicky10013]

My daughters have both told me that there was pretty well any drug you wanted freely available - at their elementary school! Everybody knew who the 'stoners' were that could sell you something and what the cost. The teaching staff seemed blissfully unaware, to the immense amusement of the kids!

Once or twice a year a policeman would come in and give the standard 'anti-drug' speech. Apparently the police had learned nothing since I was in school over 40 years earlier. They described the effects of marijuana straight from the 'Reefer Madness' movie and then insisted it was a gateway drug that would hook virtually everyone of them onto heroin very quickly.

Sadly, the kids all knew this was BS but it weakened the very valid cautions about harder drugs. Thankfully, my daughters and most of their friends were already very streetwise enough to understand the real dangers, despite the silliness of 'Deputy Dan'.

I was rather dismayed when one young fellow got expelled for dealing some pretty dangerous stuff. I found out that being expelled didn't mean what I thought it meant. He just went to the next school over, where he just resumed dealing to a new market! I'm not sure if it's possible to be expelled in the fashion us old farts remember anymore.

I believe most of what you've posted, but clearly, elementary school is just being overly alarmist. How many people here know 13 year old drug dealers? Right.