Dirty Old Town

My hometown, Hamilton, is the 8th largest city in Canada, with a 2001 population of 490,284. Last night, there was a hostage taking, murder, and subsequent suicide just a dozen or so houses down the street from me.

Hamilton has a reputation as a dangerous, grimy place. While I won't argue the grime, I question the crime. And that was a rhyme.

So, let's crunch the numbers! These are the 2004 crime stats for all cities in Canada larger than 100,000. Numbers are "per 100,000 residents".
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What's this, dear readers? Do I see Hamilton boasting a substantially lower crime rate than almost all other cities of a similar size in Canada? And marking the largest decrease in total criminal offenses? Do I see Toronto with higher homicide and robbery rates? In fact, the homicide rate in Hamilton is lower than that of Honolulu

Hamilton, it seems, compares very favourably with all other major cities in Canada, some of which have property values considerably higher than that of my gloomy industrial city. What the heck is going on in Saskatchewan, though? Farmer uprising?

For the sake of interest, let's look at the 2005 city homicide rates down in the U.S.A.

Compton, Calif. 67.1
Gary, Ind. 58.0
Birmingham, Ala. 44.3
Youngstown, Ohio 43.7
Baltimore, Md. 42.0
Camden, N.J. 41.2
Flint, Mich. 40.1
Detroit, Mich. 39.3
Richmond, Calif. 38.8
St. Louis, Mo. 37.9
Trenton, N.J. 36.2
Washington, DC 35.4

Kind of depressing, really, but then that's the 12 worst. I think Compton technically counts as a revolution in progress, doesn't it? Anyway, let's skip way down the list, to #75.

Minneapolis, MN 12.5
Peoria, Ill. 12.4
Pueblo, Colo. 12.4
Rockford, Ill. 12.4
Lancaster, Calif. 12.3
North Las Vegas, Nev. 12.2
Yakima, Wash. 12.2
Bellflower, Calif. 11.9
Springfield, Mass. 11.9
St. Petersburg, Fla. 11.8
Columbus, Ga. 11.7

...and so on to #100.

Newport News, Va. 10.8

The U.S. national rate in 2005 was 5.6 murders per 100,000 people. Canada was 1.9 in 2004. Hamilton was 1.3.

While gathering these stats, I was interested to discover that, while the UK has a very low homicide rate, it's overall violent crime/robbery rates are just about the highest in the first world. From the Telegraph:

According to the comparison of international crime statistics produced by the UN's Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, England and Wales had 9,766 crimes for every 100,000 people in the year 2000. America had 8,517, South Africa 7,997, Germany 7,621 and Russia 2,022.

New Zealand and FINLAND of all places, are higher.


Rule, Britannia!