Senator Kenny on the Recession & Policing

Senator Colin Kenny is right about one thing in his latest public commentary about the state of security in Canada: during a recession crime rates spike (see: United States Homicide Rates & Recessions, in A. Wanless, “Alternatively: Towards a Better System,” 2009). The Senator’s proposed measures to counter the likely rise in crime, however, aren’t quite as illuminating.

Putting more police on the beat isn’t going to fix the problem with crime because it doesn’t address the root causes for such activity; furthermore, increasing the ranks of law enforcement certainly won’t achieve any sort of immediate fix as training new officers (good ones anyway) takes time and then the question becomes what to do with the enlarged forces after the economy improves (if it does)? All of this is to say nothing of the rampant corruption in at least one of Canada’s larger police forces that will probably only worsen with the economy.

Beyond all of this, there is a simple problem with math in what the good senator is telling the public that is a bit misleading; in pointing out how many more officers the U.S. Coast Guard deploys in the Great Lakes, Senator Kenny neglects to note the considerable difference in population between Canada and the United States; granted, 14 RCMP officers isn’t all that many to patrol such a vast area, but Canada also doesn’t have the 300 million people its neighbour to the South does.

This entry was posted on April 20 2009 at 17:15 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.