Stupid on Crime, Part Umpty-Two

Here's the thing about crime stats. You can squeal and lie and dismiss all you want. One stat does NOT lie. The homicide rate.

Canada’s crime rate fell again last year and is now at its lowest level in almost 40 years.

Crimes reported to police dropped 5 per cent in 2010. The decline spanned a wide range of offences, including the homicide rate, which fell by 10 per cent to a level not seen since 1966.

“Homicide is one of the few types of violent crime that almost invariably comes to the attention of police and, as such, is generally recognized as a country’s barometer of violence,” Statistics Canada said in a report released Thursday.

In addition, an index measuring the severity of crimes fell 6 per cent from 2009, reaching its lowest point since it was introduced in 1998.

The national crime rate, which has been falling steadily for the past 20 years, is now at its lowest level since 1973, Statscan said.

Because, unlike sexual assault or theft under/over or other crimes, which may be differently defined or reported, a homicide pretty well entails a dead person and dead people are hard to ignore or redefine.

There is much more uniform reporting of murder stats across jurisdictions, which is why they're preferred for international comparisons.

Here's the StatsCan report. Just about every sort of crime -- including youth crime -- is down markedly.

So what did the Stooopid on Crime Cons have to say? Here's Justice spokesthingy:

"We don't use these statistics as an excuse not to get tough on criminals," said spokeswoman Pamela Stephens.

Hoooo-kay.

But this report is throwing a spaniard into ConCrime plans:

"From the government's perspective, crime going down is probably an embarrassment," said Anthony Doob, a criminologist at the University of Toronto. "For the rest of us, it's probably a nice thing to have less crime in our community."

Doob said crime rates and punishment policy are not linked.

"The one thing we know with any kind of certainty is that (a falling crime rate) doesn't have much to do with policies related to punishment," said Doob. "Sending more people to prison may reduce the likelihood that they're committing offences while they're in prison but, if anything, it increases the likelihood that they'll commit offences after they've been released."

Why can' we have nice, productive, progressive evidence-based policies? Why, when we know the facts, know what works and what doesn't, do we ignore all that and behave stupidly? Why do we let stupid people run things?

Of all the lying, fear-mongering, venality, and just plain meanness on the civic stage at the moment, what most distresses me is the WILLFUL IGNORANCE.

We need to make courage politically desirable. Not only tell the truth, but act on it.

When pesky facts stand in the way of your goals ...

you get rid of them, right?

Stevie Spiteful dreamed of beating the Liberals to a pulp with his Karl Rove tactics. In 2004 he said in 2004 to his supporters, those who bankrolled his drive to power:

"We can create a country built on solid Conservative values, not on expensive Liberal promises, a country the Liberals wouldn't even recognize, the kind of country I want to lead."

Some of those folks are getting really pissed at Stevie right now for his decision (as part of his plan to grind down Stats Canada to a shell of its former status as a credible collector of data) to abolish the long-form census questionnaire.

The top Jewish and Evangelical Christian organizations in Canada have joined the surging wave of opposition to the Conservative government's axing of next year's long census.

The Canadian Jewish Congress and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada have both written to the Conservative cabinet to say they rely heavily on the data from the census in order to serve their faith communities.

Questions on religion are asked on the compulsory census every 10 years and the 2011 census would have been the next opportunity.

Oops.

There's this too.

In a sharply worded editorial, the Canadian Medical Association Journal accuses the Tories of putting ideology ahead of “evidence-based decision making” and charges the government is taking an “uninformed approach to public policy.”

Solid Conservative values ... a country Liberals - and non-Liberals - won't even recognize ... yes, the picture of the Canada Stevie wants to lead is coming into sharper focus every day he's still controlling the government.