Statistics just out on Canada’s crime situation are being introduced as both good and bad news.  The good, perhaps surprising to many of us, is that overall Canada’s crime rate is down.  The bad, not so surprising, is that incidents of youth crime, particularly violent youth crime, are up almost across the board.  Little PEI, for example, while scoring a significant drop in overall crime of 11% (better than any other province), took a hit of +38% in youth crime, indicating that other crime must certainly have fallen solidly.

Particularly frightening to most of us are the growing incidents of “swarmings”, where temporary gangs of young people, often mixed male and female, attack people at random, seemingly only for the sport of the horrifying event.  Swarmings take place on a twice per week basis in Toronto, but in spite of that, due to the very large population, the city is cited as being one of the safest locations in Canada.  More alarming are swarmings in smaller centres, such as Fredericton, where three incidents have taken place since May, and Halifax-Darmouth has had its share.

The level of violence in these swarmings is shocking.  Baseball bats, pipes, 2 x 4 lumber and other weapons are mentioned, as is the too common and inexplicable assault of jumping on victims heads on the pavement.  The average citizen recoils when even reading the details of these assaults, unable to find comfort in a “it won’t happen to me” attitude since these attacks seem only motivated by being on the wrong street at the wrong time. Continue reading →