When it comes to crime control, a University of Ottawa professor says many politicians, including those in the current Canadian government, are going about it all wrong. In his new book, Smarter Crime Control: A Guide to a Safer Future for Citizens, Communities, and Politicians, Irvin Waller argues that controlling crime is about prevention, not reaction, and that investments in the right solutions should help curb problems in high-crime areas such as Centretown.
Waller recently presented his new book to city councillors and representatives from the Ottawa Police Service.
He says he wants to convince politicians that by using the evidence on what actually prevents crime, violence rates can be cut in half, while billions of tax dollars can be saved. According to Waller, this evidence is already available.
“There’s more science on violence prevention than ever before. It is staggering,” he says. “It’s also incredibly accessible.”
Waller says investing in social services, such as early childhood education and public health nursing, will prevent crime before the justice system has to react to it. He uses statistics from different countries to argue that combatting crime through the correctional system or the courts is not working.
“In the United States, 75 per cent of people in front of a court on a felony charge have a prior felony conviction,” says Waller. “It’s just a revolving door.”
According to Waller, using social programs to help people avoid becoming criminals will also pay off financially, as preventative programs cost less than reactionary measures.
“I increasingly use a rule of one to seven,” says Waller. “For every dollar you invest in pre-crime, you save seven dollars in post-crime.”
Another important step in Waller’s plan is addressing social needs in problem areas. He argues that in cities, criminal activity is concentrated in high-crime neighbourhoods. In the latest yearly crime statistics from the Ottawa police, the downtown Somerset ward had the highest crime rate of all the municipal jurisdictions in Ottawa. It was followed closely by the Rideau-Vanier ward.
Ottawa’s average crime rate in 2012, which is measured by the amount of police-reported crimes per 100,000 people, was 4,102. In the Somerset ward, the 2012 figure was 12,681, about three times higher than the city’s average.
Nancy Worsfold, executive director of the city-funded Crime Prevention Ottawa, says Ottawa’s high-crime areas have something in common.
“It’s not necessarily because of people who live there, but because of the concentration of licensed establishments,” says Worsfold, referring to bars that can attract rowdy patrons. “With licensed establishments, there are fights, and assaults and disorder that sometimes are associated with drinking.”
For Worsfold, Waller’s arguments about prevention make a lot of sense.
“Obviously crime prevention is preferable to crime reaction because once there is a reaction there has already been a victim,” says Worsfold. “You want to prevent the negative event.”