BEYOND A 'GET TOUGH ON CRIME' STANCE

Safer Communities Forum

A community-based crime reduction strategy, targeting drug use and
increased early intervention, emerged as one of the best ways to build
a safer community at a day-long conference held at the Seaside Centre
on Monday.

More than 50 people attended, including several councillors from the
Town of Gibsons and District of Sechelt, who collaborated to host the
event. Guest speakers Fiona Young (from Simon Fraser University's
Institute of Urban Research Studies) and RCMP deputy commissioner Gary
Bass both updated their presentations from the previous Building Safer
Communities forum, held in the Lower Mainland in February.

"In our enthusiasm to get things done, we created rather too many
rules," said Young of the crime reduction work carried out by the Home
Office in the U.K., where she oversaw the northeast region for a decade.

Rather than adopting a "get tough on crime" stance, a 2007 review
found the strategy had to make better use of non-custodial sentencing
for crime and a need to stop young people from reoffending. The crime
reduction strategy was designed on a national scale but is being
delivered locally.

"We've clarified who's going to spearhead this, and in the U.K., it's
local government," Young said. Funding priorities shifted from
situational responses ("making things harder to steal," she said) to
drug treatment programs to get at the root causes of crime. The
strategy also saw the ranks of officers bolstered to 140,000, as well
as 60,000 "community support police officers," who provide a visible
presence needed to lower the "perception gap" - the public's view that
the streets are more dangerous than the stats show is the case.

The risk of becoming a victim of crime is down to 22 per cent in that
region of the U.K., its lowest level since a national crime survey
began in 1981. Detection technologies (installing primarily closed
circuit TV cameras in public places) remains a cornerstone of the
strategy, Young said.

In B.C., marijuana remains the cornerstone of organized crime, said
Gary Bass. Profits generated through the sale of marijuana are often
used to fund other drug industries, and synthetic drug production rose
almost annually between 1998 and 2007, he added.

"We're being used as a drug-producing country, in some respects, for
the United States," said the deputy RCMP commissioner. Since 1998,
cases of crystal meth possession have become 50 times more prominent
he said - although Sunshine Coast RCMP say that problem hasn't yet
taken root on the Coast.

Bass noted B.C. gangs stand out in Canada due to their business
acumen. Whereas gangs in other provinces are often derived from
socio-economic conditions, B.C. gangs are sophisticated and
well-organized. But the RCMP is limited by funds to the extent they
can target only 23 per cent of the province's estimated 130 organized
crime groups, he said.

More B.C. murders than ever are organized crime-related, he said.
Stats show that 29 per cent of murders were gang-related in 1998, and
43 per cent were related to gangs last year. Sunshine Coast RCMP Staff
Sgt. Kevin Picard briefly identified crack cocaine as the street-level
drug most commonly used by prolific offenders on the Coast, and
underlined drug addiction as the cause for the vast majority of break
and enters on the Coast.

Faith Auton-Cuff, Van-couver Coastal Health's mental health and
addiction services manager on the Coast, highlighted a lack of
adequate housing as one root cause of crime.

"You can have the most elaborate treatment plan in the world - if
someone doesn't have a house, you can throw that out the window," she
said.

As the meeting wound up, Sechelt, Gibsons, School District 46,
Sunshine Coast RCMP, Vancouver Coastal Health, and Sunshine Coast
Community Services agreed to pursue a local safer communities
initiative.