By the Numbers

Improving Outcomes for Youth Leaving Residential Mental Health Programs

It costs a lot of money to provide treatment in a residential facility for children facing mental health issues. For a typical 6 – 8 month stay, costs can range from $20,000 to $38,400. But Social Work professors at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) found that after spending these resources, it still doesn’t seem to provide enough support to help kids transition from the treatment program back to their normal lives.

For the past three years, WLU researchers have been examining the community adaptation of over 200 youth as they left long term intensive children’s mental health programs in Ontario. They found youth leaving these treatment programs face challenges in adapting to community life after treatment. The findings are available in an executive summary, summary report, and full report.

With these issues identified the researchers set off to find a solution and they come up with the type of solution that makes policy wonks drool. They suggest youth transitioning out of residential mental health treatment should be provided programming that offers four things:

• Youth and education advocates
• Tutoring supports for at least 45 hours
• Parent training and support groups
• Youth skills development courses

You may be reading that and thinking what is to drool over in this proposal, it seems so logical? This is the beauty of the plan from a policy perspective, it’s a straightforward approach requiring minimal resources and most importantly, the program is based in good evidence.

It’s also effective from a crime prevention approach. Children leaving treatment are at greater risk for delinquent behavior. In addition, one half of the individuals in a mental health treatment program will return to the care of family and children services likely ending up in a group home placement. Criminal behaviour for youth in group homes is extremely high. Providing youth leaving mental health treatment facilities with the support they need can prevent them from being involved in the justice system.

Preventing crime does not need to be flashy, it just needs to work. It needs to be smart on crime.

By the Numbers: Rising or falling…that is the question

In a recent report, Why Canadian Crime Statistics Don’t Add Up: Not the Whole Truth, written for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, author Scott Newark argues that violent crime has actually increased in Canada despite Statistics Canada reporting a decrease in violent crimes for the past decade. We could have predicted the controversy this would cause. Professor Anthony Doob and lawyer Edward Greenspan, among others, are taking Newark to task on the research methodology used for this report.

Doob and Greenspan contend that Newark’s report is flawed by his use of data that cannot be compared statistically. To get even more technical, they also suggest that Newark uses numbers from older reports with different definitions of “violence” and that he looks at overall numbers of violent crime without accounting for increases in population. Doob and Greenspan are unequivocal that these are statistical errors that end up showing an increase when in reality there was a decrease.

Anna Maria Tremonti recently interviewed Scott Newark on The Current. Audio of the interview can be found online. It is well worth a listen as Tremonti digs into the challenges of presenting and interpreting complex data like crime statistics.

While the debate about the data continues, the fact remains that Canada’s public safety and crime policies will be influenced by one set of data or another.

And that’s why numbers matter.

By the numbers: Crime trends in Canada

Measuring trends and services over time and within consistent categories is a strength that makes Correctional Services Canada reports a fascinating read. No, seriously! It’s true!

The 2010 report on corrections, crime and the criminal justice system provides data that can help with understanding some very complex issues. It also provides information needed by all levels of our community to make informed decisions based on sound evidence. We might even say that this data helps us to make “smart on crime” decisions.

The report, as in years past, draws comparisons between Canada and other countries. Canada’s rate of incarceration is higher than that of most Western countries but still falls well below that of the United States, where currently over 756 persons per 100 000 population are in jail. Or, did you know that most victims of violent crimes are younger than 30 years of age?

Why are these numbers important? What do they tell us over time? How do we change our systems as a result of knowing this information? What is the role of ‘smart’ prevention approaches to help reduce these numbers?

Didn’t we warn you it would be fascinating?

Television and fear of crime

Does watching real-life crime stories increase your fear of crime or do you watch real life crime stories because you are afraid of crime? This question remains after reading Watching the Detectives: Crime programming, fear of crime, and attitudes about the criminal justice system. Researched and written by university professors Lisa Kort-Butler and Keller Hartshorn, this study shows a relationship between fear of crime and the type of television program people watch.

According to the study, people who watch nonfiction crime programs, like ABC’s Primetime or The First 48 hours, are more fearful of becoming a victim of crime than those who did not. Interestingly, they found that people who watched crime dramas, like Law and Order or NYPD Blue, were no more fearful of crime than those that did not these shows.

The article speculates the difference is related to the fact that crime dramas show the police getting “the job done and the offender gets his or her desserts”. In contrast, crime documentaries often show the authorities one step behind the criminal while they emphasis that the victim could be anyone. Despite this speculation the authors acknowledge the limit of their study. Based upon the results they simply do not know if fear of crime is the cause or the result of what TV shows people watch. This is summarized in a common used academic statement….. correlation does not mean causation.

This limitation in research is important to recognize as it is a common issue in studies. Using statistics academics can be fairly confident that one thing is related to another but in order to explain that one thing causes another is much more difficult.

The Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council has done its own Fear of Crime Report using data from the 2008 Waterloo Region Local Area Survey. While it doesn’t ask any questions about TV habits, there are some fascinating observations and findings about perceptions of safety and fear of crime. You can find a copy of the report online.

So, what do you think, do people who are afraid of crime gravitate towards crime documentaries? Or does watching real life crime stories gradually make someone more afraid of becoming a victim themselves? The experts don’t know yet, so your guess is as good as theirs!

Crime data by the numbers: Helpful or harmful?

The ongoing conversation about crime, data, fear of crime, and the combination of all three, has always been a matter of much public debate.

The debate continues in this article from The Guardian: Crime maps, policing and fear. They raise the questions… Does this type of crime data do anything to reduce crime?  What does the data actually tell us? Does it provide tools for neighbourhoods dealing with crime issues? Does this information increase the fear of crime?

“If there is a lesson to be drawn from a history of fear-of-crime research, it is that the more we attempted to measure and analyse fear of crime in attempts to allay fear, the more fearful the public became.” says Murray Lee, director of the Institute of Criminology, Sydney, Australia.

Daniel Bear digs into the complexity of presenting crime data through pin-point maps that “implicitly point the finger at police, when in fact, it’s a much larger set of issues”.

Regardless of the helpfulness or harmfulness of the data… these maps attract a lot of attention and visitors, even from those who are critical of them. In fact, the UK Home Office experienced ‘technical difficulties’ after it released its crime map… it seems like 18 million visits per hour created a bit of website overload.

What are your thoughts? Is crime mapping a ‘smart’ approach to crime prevention?

Everything you wanted to know about statistics but were afraid to ask

Mark Twain popularized the phrase “there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics”.  Now, over 100 years later, the volume of information and the number of statistics we are exposed to has dramatically increased.  If we believe an informed public is an important part of a healthy and engaged community, it is important that citizens understand statistical jargon and how statistics can be used to hide what is really taking place in the world.

So here begins our mission: to debunk crime and crime prevention statistics for the rest of us!

“By the Numbers” will take an in depth look at crime statistics and research. It will help us, and a community engaged in crime prevention, to understand and challenge statistics and they way they are used to share and present information, influence and justify policy decisions and explain what’s happening in the world today.

Take for example a newspaper article that discusses a murder rate increase of 25%.  This statistic seems alarming. However, if the rate increases to five murders from the previous year of four murders, does the statistic still seem as shocking? This is a classic way to lie with statistics, without actually lying. Presenting percentage changes instead of absolute changes creates a misleading perception. The reverse can also be done. For example, saying that break and enters increased by 75 incidents sounds like a lot. But, if there were 7,500 break and enters in the previous year… an increase of 75 represents only a 1% increase.

I bet you’re intrigued now and can’t wait for more!

“By the Numbers” contributors will include Anthony Piscitelli, Research Supervisor at WRCPC, Jessica Hutchison, Research Analyst at WRCPC and other special guests.