By Sierra Rayne ——Bio and Archives--January 4, 2015
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"Demographics -- specifically, the number of men between the ages of 15 and 24 -- has the biggest impact on the crime rate. The prime minister can't really take credit for the aging of the baby boom echo generation. It's likely that his policies -- more incarceration -- have made us less safe, since prison often makes criminals worse, not better."It is not clear where Maher's sweeping generalizations regarding 15-24 year old males and Canada's crime rates come from, but even a cursory look at the data suggests this simply cannot be accurate. Between 2005 (the year before Harper took office) and 2013 (the latest year with complete crime data), the percentage of the Canadian population made up of 15-24 year old males declined only slightly from 7.02 percent to 6.73 percent. This is only a 4 percent decline in the proportion of the population comprised of 15-24 year old males. And yet, the overall crime rate -- all Criminal Code violations (excluding traffic) -- fell by more than 29 percent between 2005 and 2013. How does a 4 percent decline in the proportion of 15-24 year old males lead to a nearly 30 percent reduction in the crime rate? The violent crime rate declined by over 21 percent, and the property crime rate by almost 36 percent.
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Sierra Rayne holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and writes regularly on environment, energy, and national security topics. He can be found on Twitter at @srayne_ca