THE COMPLEXITIES OF CRIME

The new Institute for the Prevention on Crime at the University of
Ottawa should be a valuable addition to public safety across Canada.

"No one's interested in something you didn't do," Gord Downie sings
in the Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings, about David Milgaard's
wrongful conviction. And it's hard to get policymakers' attention for
preventing problems. After all, there are more votes in sharp
responses to public-safety problems -- such as the three killings
we've had in Ottawa recently -- than in preventing them.

They should pay attention. Very often, our approaches to crime
prevention are based on hunches or on copying things that works elsewhere.

Crime is an intensely local problem with myriad complex causes. A
midnight basketball league might cut street crime in one city but be
useless in another -- so under just what cultural and economic
circumstances does midnight basketball work? And witness the debate
on the federal gun registry after Kimveer Gill's shooting rampage at
Montreal's Dawson College -- is the thing useless in principle, or is
it just not strong enough? Or is it just ineffective at stopping this
kind of crime? Bleeding hearts and string-'em-up types seem to be
able to find evidence of anything they want in these incidents.

With questions like these to consider, the $1.6 million in federal
funding the University of Ottawa institute is getting is too modest,
given what we spend on policing, courts and corrections. Hard
evidence beats anecdotes every time, and the information the centre
generates should prove the money a very fruitful investment in public safety.