December 7, 2012
Prince George Free Press (BC) – DeLynda Pilon
City still atop Maclean’s crime ranking
With only one murder in 2011, here’s the scoop on how to get to the title MacLean’s most crime infested city in Canada! You have to master the Crime Severity Index (CSI) if you have ambitions to supplant Prince George or the next in line – Red Deer or Grande Prairie. http://www.pgfreepress.com/news/182422901.html
Cambridge Times:
Mixed signals on root causes of crime rates
Kitchener-Waterloo Crime Prevention Council is a little leery about crime reduction figures while the social trust and conditions like poor educational levels, unemployment and income – continue to decline. Some usual predictors of crime appear to be on the increase. http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/news/local/article/1549898–mixed-signals-on-root-causes-of-crime-rates
Stats Canada Crime Report for the year
(Go to crime and Justice for the latest numbers.) http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/subject-sujet/theme-theme.action%3Bjsessionid=4B70D9E3280C98B0ECA768102AF29BFC?pid=2693&lang=eng&more=0
Stats Canada: Youth crime rate and youth Crime Severity Index, Canada, 2001 to 2011
Both frequency and severity of crime are dropping from 7159 with severity of 106 in 2001 to 5564 and 83 in 2011. Both numbers have fallen every year of the ten year graph, except for 2003 where there is a return to the highest 2001 levels. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-005-x/2012001/article/11749/c-g/desc/desc-01-eng.htm
Calgary 420 Cannabis Community – Keith Fagin
Marijuana Decriminalization Drops Youth Crime Rates by Stunning 20% in One Year
This report is from the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) and senior research fellow Mike Males its author. “After the new pot law went into effect in January 2011… arrests for youths for the largest single drug category, marijuana, fell by 9,000 to a level not seen since before the 1980s implementation of the ‘war on drugs,’ ” Males wrote in the report, released in October. http://calgary420.ca/forum/index.php?topic=3717 Original report from AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/marijuana-decriminalization-drops-youth-crime-rates-stunning-20-one-year
Liz Elliott Memorial Lecture and Dialogue – Dr. Theo Gavrielides
Restorative Punishment: Reconciling Restorative Justice with Imprisonment
From the SFU Restorative Justice Centre, the lecture focuses on reconciling the concepts of restorative justice and punishment, as well as providing an overview of restorative theory to date. The link offers a downloadable Power Point presentation of the lecture in which Dr. Gavrielides suggests that we need to think normatively about RJ. http://www.iars.org.uk/content/RJpunishment
National Public Radio – Shankar Vedantam
Can Murder Be Tracked Like An Infectious Disease?
Yes, according to the main author of this study. “We looked at homicide as an infectious disease,” April Zeoli of Michigan State University’s School of Criminal Justice said in an interview. “To spread, an infectious disease needs three things: a source of the infection; a mode of transmission; and we need a susceptible population.” The 2,366 murders in Newark, N.J. from 1982 – 2007 provided the basis for the study and conclusion. http://www.npr.org/2012/12/06/166600403/can-murder-be-tracked-like-an-infectious-disease