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For earlier materials see Table of Contents

Crime in NW BC	Smithers
	Highest rate in province

Looking for ‘causes’ in the stats

This review prompted by article in Smithers’ newspaper

Right Wing agenda??

Penny pinching not the courts as ‘’problem’

Highest Crime Rate

“The 2004 report released last summer indicated Smithers had the highest crime rate in the province for three years running” (Their site framed)

I did not find the Solicitor General’s 2005 Municipal Crime Rate Report on the WWW but the 2004 report was there and made for interesting reading

When looking for causes the Smithers politicos (and the journalist) point to the ‘revolving door of the court system’ --- the sub-text seems to read typical right wing agenda: ‘we need tougher sentencing as courts too lenient’ etc.

While ‘Crime Rate’ (criminal code offences/ population) are high the site stats page suggest case burden is a better indicator --- and here we see that Smithers appears to be under-staffed (same site lists 9 officers while 25 in Terrace and 36 in Rupert (that number has now been cut to (??)

Longer Look

This is simply criminal code offences and not controlled for different population sizes

The value is the longer term perspective – while PR fairly flat at this rate --- Smithers has approximately 50% increase (did they cut staffing? – as PR has recently done)

The Rural detachments

See QCIs

I am throwing this in because it seems to say about ‘crime’ on Haida Gwaii --- again no info on staffing etc

Another View

Using this map (presumably based upon crimes/ population units) looks like Smithers (or its health unit area) is actually quite peaceful and crime free

I will update this as 2005 stats become available in WWW

Created by LG on July20, 2006

Last updated on Thursday, July 20, 2006