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."