Hyping crime: what we feel about crime and the reality can be two different things

They call it "reality - based" television, and give the shows names such as Top Cops, American Detective, and FBI: The Untold Stories. They are on our screens every evening for those who choose to watch them. Camera teams are sent out with police officers on crack - house raids, or to cool down a violent domestic dispute, or to investigate a murder. Cleverly edited together, the viewer sees a fast - paced, action - packed half hour of human misery. The show may be "reality - based" but it's far from reality.

In the first place, if it is anybody's reality it's America's, and the crime scene in Canada is vastly different from that of the U.S. For example, violent crimes in the United States occur at almost three times the rate they do in Canada. In the second place, it isn't reality at all. Someone watching these shows regularly will "witness" almost every kind of crime in the space of a month. In reality, most of us go through life without ever seeing a bank robbery taking place, or a murder being committed, or a drug bust being carried out.

But what we see on television shapes our view of reality. Our perception is that there's a heck of a lot more crime going on out there in the mean streets than there really is. There's no question the picture is distorted. Survey after survey finds that the greatest fear of crime is expressed by the elderly, who are, in fact, least at risk; the least fear is expressed by males aged 18 to 29, who are most at risk. An Angus Reid poll in 1991 found that 85% of urban residents saw crime as a growing threat.

Here's what Elliot Leyton says. He's a professor at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. He's studied violent crime and he offered this opinion to the Canadian Criminal Justice Congress not long ago: "There is no explosion of violent crime. The homicide rate in Canada has been dropping for years." Professor Leyton says the media, but not just them, must take the blame for presenting an overblown image of crime in our society. He also takes police forces to task for helping to build the myth of crime waves in order to help them increase their funding.

He points to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Police Brotherhood's demand for weapons. The constabulary is the only police force in Canada that doesn't carry sidearms. However, Professor Leyton says that, "In order to consolidate their campaign for sidearmsthey would draw attention to tragic police killings in other provinces...saying it would only be a matter of time before it happens here." But, no member of the Newfoundland force has ever been killed by guns.

Elsewhere in Canada, public concerns reflect what's currently hot in the media. In 1989, swarmings were making the headlines. Several cases were reported from shopping malls of young people swarming and robbing victims. And, guess what a 1989 federal study found Canadians in major cities feared most becoming victims of? Right -- swarmings. But, the likelihood of any one person becoming a victim of a swarming is somewhere between very slim and none.

And, what are the chances of being a victim of any other crime? They're fairly slim too. The rap sheet in Canada runs to around 2.5 million Criminal Code offences a year. All those crimes range from someone fiddling their income tax form to abduction, rape, and murder.

Only 10.8% of all crimes involve violence. The incidence of violent crime has been increasing steadily by about 5% a year for a decade. However, some authorities claim this increase is caused mostly by a change in the way figures are reported. In 1992, 2.67 people per 100,000 were murdered (down from 2.72/100,000 in 1982). Murder victims are far more likely to know their attacker than not, less than 20% of murders are committed by strangers. This flies in the face of the common fear many people have of being the random victim of a deranged serial killer.

Young people commit more crimes than older people; youths aged 12 to 17 are responsible for almost a quarter of all Criminal Code offences -- most of these being property crimes. Males commit 90% of all violent crimes and almost 80% of all property crimes, although females are catching up. In 1990, police charged 23,610 girls, aged 12 to 17 with offences. That was up 29% over the previous year, a rate of increase more than double that of boys.

Criminologist Neil Boyd looks at actual crime figures and doesn't see any disturbing trends: "I don't think there's much reason to believe we're a fundamentally different society than we were 20 years ago. The relative rate of risk for Canadians hasn't changed dramatically."

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. Appoint a team of students to watch "reality - based" police shows on television for a couple of weeks. Have the students analyse the shows' content and presentation and then give a report to the class as the basis for a discussion on the difference between reality and perception.

2. Survey your class to find out how many students have actually witnessed a serious crime taking place.

Copyright Canada and The World Feb 1994
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