Member Committee to Understand the Criminal Justice System

If you don’t know how something works, how can you fix it? What tools would you use?

Elected officials continue to raise awareness and attempt to contribute to solutions to address rural crime. Efforts are met with limited success, likely due in part to the complexity of the Canadian Criminal Justice System, the multiple levels of authority and decision-making and the overarching impact of social issues.  Results for recent RMA resolutions on this topic are currently incomplete:

• 11-23S – Reforming the Bail System to Address Rural Crime:  resolution is still active and targets a specific component of the larger, complex Canadian Criminal Justice System – current status for the response is “Intent not met”
• 2-18S – Combatting Rural Crime:  resolution expired in 2021 leaving an “Accepted in Part” status for the responses from the Government of Alberta, Government of Canada and Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

“Justice is a revolving door”, “not our jurisdiction” and “justice is not a tool that fixes social issues” are all common phrases used by various levels of government when rural municipalities raise concerns about rural crime.  Although all three statements may be accurate to an extent, RMA members still need to understand the complex system in which we are working to make recommendations for meaningful and impactful change. We are led to believe that mental health and drug addictions can lead to crime, and similarly crime can lead to further addictions, continuing the cycle; how can we address one without understanding the other?   Furthermore, provincial jails do not have drug treatment programs as they are just short-term housing (less than 2 yrs), with many detainees staying on average 6-8 months, an insufficient period of time for detox. Federal jails, however, do have drug treatment programs as detainees are staying for more than 2 yrs.

Municipalities are often involved in providing or funding support services in our communities. How do we know which services should be provided, or which services would be the most effective if we don’t know what the gaps in the system are? How do we learn about the various components and lines of responsibility/authority so we can have informed conversations and be part of finding the solutions that will lead to meaningful change in our communities?

Despite the efforts, we are not seeing the results that are desperately needed. The most recent Statistics Canada Report, 2023 (which reflects 2021 data) clearly shows that rural crime is still a significant issue.

• Rural police services served about 15% of the population in Canada, and yet reported 21% of all Criminal Code & Federal Statute related crimes.
• Crime rate is a measure of the volume of crime related to population. Crime rates reflected 7,033 criminal code incidents / 100,000 rural population which is 43% higher than the urban population, while the rural violent crime rate was 76% higher than the urban population.
• Crime Severity Index (CSI) is a measure of the volume and relative seriousness of crimes. CSI is 33% higher in rural areas than in urban areas, with violent CSI even higher in rural areas at 46%.
• Property offences represent the main category of crime in both rural and urban areas and reflect the most similar statistics, however, rural crime rates are still 22% higher than urban.
• Across Canada, the prairie provinces record the highest rural CSI with Alberta ranking 3rd behind Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Municipalities want to be part of the conversation to achieve change that will address rural crime across Alberta.  To do that we need to understand all the stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities and how the various components of the system are integrated, similar to the approach recently used by QJAC. RMA could once again provide the leadership and resources to support its members in acquiring the necessary knowledge and strengthening the rural voice in advocating for meaningful change to address rural crime.