Room 611: Friday, February 11. 2022

Today's schedule is BADC

B Block Criminology -To start today I'll have you share your opinions about crime trends from yesterday. Since 1962, Statistics Canada has collected information on all criminal incidents reported by Canadian police services through its annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. In addition to the now UCR2, Statistics Canada also collects information on victims of crime through the General Social Survey (GSS) on Canadians’ Safety (Victimization), which is conducted every five years. Unlike the UCR, the GSS on Victimization collects data on self-reported experiences with crime which include incidents that may or may not have been brought to the attention of the police. These complementary surveys are the primary sources of data on crime and victimization in Canada.

So what about trends?

Police-reported crime in Canada, as measured by the Crime Severity Index (CSI), decreased 8% in the first year of the pandemic (2020) - falling from 79.8 in 2019 to 73.4 in 2020. The CSI was 11% lower than a decade earlier in 2010. The CSI measures the volume and severity of police-reported crime in Canada, and has a base index value of 100 for 2006. The police-reported crime rate, which measures the volume of crime, also fell 10% in 2020 to 5,301 incidents per 100,000 Canadians. In 2020, police reported over 2 million Criminal Code incidents (excluding traffic offences), 195,015 less than in 2019.

All measures of the CSI - the overall CSI, the Violent CSI and the Non-violent CSI - decreased for the first time after five years of increases. Notably, the combined volume and severity of non-violent crime, as measured by the Non-violent CSI, decreased 10% in 2020. This was the largest year-over-year change in the Non-violent CSI dating back to 1998, the first year for which CSI data are available. Results from the 2019 General Social Survey on Victimization found that just under one-third (29%) of violent and non-violent incidents were reported to the police. Additionally, the pandemic resulted in exceptional conditions that may have impacted crime reporting by the public, as well as police administration and priorities which could affect proactive policing in communities.

The change in the overall CSI in 2020 was the result of lower police-reported rates for the following offences, ordered according to their relative impact on the CSI:

breaking and entering (-16%),
theft of $5,000 or under (-20%),
robbery (-18%),
shoplifting of $5,000 or under (-36%),
administration of justice violations (-17%) and
sexual assault (level 1) (-9%).

The number of police-reported hate crimes in Canada increased by 37% during the first year of the pandemic, rising from 1,951 incidents in 2019 to 2,669 in 2020. This marks the largest number of police-reported hate crimes since comparable data became available in 2009. Police-reported hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity almost doubled (+80%) compared with the previous year, accounting for the vast majority of the national increase in hate crimes. This difference was most pronounced among participants of Chinese (30%), Korean (27%), and Southeast Asian (19%) origin.

Police reported 5,142 opioid-related offences in Canada in 2020, 34% more than the previous year. All opioid-related drug violations increased, including more possession, trafficking, production and importation or exportation offences. In the first nine months following the implementation of COVID-19 prevention measures (April to December 2020), there were 5,148 opioid-related deaths, up 89% from the same period in 2019. Of all accidental apparent opioid toxicity deaths in 2020, 82% involved fentanyl or fentanyl analogues.

Police reported 743 homicides in 2020, 56 more than the year before. The homicide rate increased 7%, and marked the fourth consecutive year where the rate exceeded the average for the previous decade. Police reported 201 Indigenous homicide victims in 2020, 22 more than in 2019. The homicide rate for Indigenous males was four times that for Indigenous females and eight times higher than for non-Indigenous males

Lastly, I'll have you work on the three questions about crime trends I posted yesterday:

Using pages 37 to 46 in the CRIM textbook outline and explain the crime patterns in relation to ecology, firearms, social class, age, gender and race.
What is a chronic offender and what is the significance of Marvin Wolfgang's discovery (why is identifying the chronic offender important)?
How would you explain the gender differences in the crime rate (why do you think males are more violent than females)?

CTV News Crime Severity
Canada's Most Dangerous Places Maclean's
Stats Can Crime Severity Index (Police Reported Crime)
Crime in Canada Charts
RCMP Crime Statistics Surrey, BC
Crime Statistics in British Columbia, 2018

A Block Legal Studies - Today to start the class, we'll go through sections 7 - 14 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (legal rights section). When we're done we'll watch an episode of Law & Order. We'll watch "Bodies" from season 14 (January 2003). From IMDb...

A serial killer refuses to tell Jack McCoy the names and locations of all of his victims. The killer's defense attorney has the information too, but refuses to disclose it because of attorney-client privilege.

The episode is a dramatization of the case of Robert Garrow Sr.. In that case, his two defense attorneys were cleared of legal and ethical charges. The fact pattern is taught at every level of law school ethics education and was part of the plan for the model attorney ethics code. In the Garrow case, the lawyers were tried with violating health codes by not reporting the location of the decomposing bodies. Attorneys Francis Belge and Frank Armani paid a heavy price for their questionable conduct in defense of Garrow. For years, they continued to defend their decision to withhold information that would have led to the discovery of Susan Petz and Alicia Hauck. Both men believed their conduct was in compliance with their oath as attorneys. “To Belge and me, this oath was and is a serious matter, a sacred trust. At the time we took our oath of office, neither of us had the slightest idea of the awesome consequences it would someday carry,” Armani later wrote.

In the Law & Order episode, Schwimmer (the Defense attorney) is charged with being an accessory to murder, since he had to unlock and re-lock the location of the bodies, a novel legal maneuver that is challenged unsuccessfully by his attorney. Schwimmer's conviction means he is automatically disbarred, so he is no longer held by privilege. Lawyers sent to prison can't be forced to break with their past cases, unless they were sent to prison as part of a conspiracy in a particular case. Even then, they only have to talk about the case they were convicted in, which is exactly what happens to Schwimmer.

D Block Physical Geography - Today we'll continue our work on the Prince Rupert topographic map from the Canadian Landscape (pages 20 - 23). I'll need you to finish questions 5, 7 a,b,d & e, and 9 a & b. Use Google Earth or Google Maps to help you with this assignment. For more on Prince Rupert check out:

The Northern View
Love Prince Rupert
and remember the vids I posted on the blog Friday...they can help too

For the last question about heartland and hinterland check out the following links on core and periphery (same concept) at:

Core and Periphery, Two Types That Make the World

Core and Periphery

C Block Human Geography - Today we'll examine the concept of possibilism connected to sustainability and cultural ecology. I'd like you to examine two examples of how human beings have altered the physical environment in the Netherlands and in Florida. From the text...

Few ecosystems have been as thoroughly modified by humans as the Netherlands and Florida's Everglades. Because more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level, most of the country today would be under water if it were not for massive projects to modify the environment by holding back the sea. Meanwhile, the fragile landscape of south Florida has been altered in insensitive ways.

So I'd like you to identify in point form the problems in both these locations and explain what have humans done (Describe the human modifications and adaptations to these two environments).