Looking for Toronto police stats.

November 23, 2007 5:18 PM

I am looking for sites that publish Canadian police internal investigation and conviction statistics, Toronto in particular.

I would like to settle an argument with a friend who is under the impression that our local force is so corrupt that the number of its members convicted of a crime is disproportionately low compared to other agencies around the world. Given that there will always be a few rotten apples and that the blue line will exist in every agency these numbers should be relatively uniform when compared to similar cities.

I would also be interested in any other sites with (free) statistics on local crime - Toronto in particular.

Thank-you in advance

posted by rupeh to Society & Culture (1 answer total)

A good place to start is the Juristat reader.

I teach criminology at the U of Calgary and have never heard that TO's force is MORE corrupt than an average Canadian force. It might have more problems with morale than other forces and it hires racist asshats to run the show, but that's anecdotal of course and not itself "corrupt."

You don't ask about this but when comparing TO to "similar cities," I hope you mean "Canadian cities," because comparing crime stats b/t the US and Canada is not straightforward. The biggest problem with that comparison is that composite "crime rates" for Canada comprise a large number of serious and non-serious offences, including quotidian nonsense like "simple assault" (when Ralph Klein was pied by that anarchist in the tiny cowboy hat at the Calgary Stampede, his "attacker" was charged with this offense); in the US, the "crime rate" is ONLY the total among the seven most serious violent and property offenses (murder, rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery, auto theft, grand larceny, burglary). Canadian numbers for composite "crime rates" will always be higher.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:25 PM on November 23, 2007 [1 favorite]