Number of police and crime rate both drop in Hamilton: study

Hamilton’s police force sits in the middle of the pack for efficiency compared to other major Canadian cities, according to a new report.

The Hamilton area's crime rate fell 40 per cent from 2001 to 2012, while its number of police officers dropped 18 per cent, according to a report from the Fraser Institute called Police and Crime Rates in Canada: A Comparison of Resources and Outcomes. Hamilton's crime rate in 2013 fell by 12 per cent compared to the previous year.

• Fraser Institute: Police and Crime Rates in Canada
• INFOGRAPHIC | Police costs: How Canada stacks up
• ANALYSIS | The exploding cost of policing in Canada

That stands in stark contrast to national levels. The average number of police officers per 100,000 Canadians rose 8.2 per cent in that same time period, while crime rates dropped by 26.3 per cent.

"Hamilton is interesting because of those declines," said the study’s author, Livio Di Matteo. "The crime drop is on the high end — Hamilton and Toronto both had much higher crime drops than many places."

Di Matteo is a professor of economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont. He based his results on Statistics Canada data for police resources, costs, and crime rates for a select set of census areas rather than specific police forces — which includes both Burlington and Grimsby for this area. That could account for some fluctuations in both in crime rate and level of policing data, as crime data in those locations is different than data from just the city of Hamilton and the city's police force.

"It is a population-based measure," Di Matteo said. "But the study is pretty up front about how it's being used." It is possible to dig down into the data on a city by city measure, he added, but it's a "much more detailed process to do it that way."

Di Matteo found that in 2012 (the year for which the most recent data on per capita costs was available) Ontarians paid the highest policing costs at $272.50 per person, while taxpayers in P.E.I. paid the least at $148.20.

Di Matteo also created a formula to predict the total number of police officers individual census areas should theoretically have, and then compared those numbers to the actual size of police forces providing a rough estimate of police staffing efficiency in those areas.

Report does not take drug or traffic arrests into account

Based on the formula — which the author concedes attempts to account for a very complex set of socio-economic factors like an aging population and crime rate considerations like the number of police — Kelowna, B.C., Moncton, N.B., and Ottawa-Gatineau, Ont./Que., were the most efficiently staffed census areas in terms of the number of officers for every 100,000 people.

Based on these formulas, Hamilton was the 14th most efficient city in Canada, just behind Toronto, Guelph and Barrie.

The study does not, however, take into account traffic or drug offences – types of crime from which arrests can fluctuate depending on how many resources a given police force allots to fighting them.

According to Hamilton police crime statistics, drug crime offences in the city rose 92 per cent from 2003 to 2012, while traffic violations were down 11.9 per cent.

Wrestling over a budget

The rising financial burden of policing in Canada has come under scrutiny in recent years. In January 2013, representatives from all levels of government, police chiefs, academics and civilian police watchdogs convened in Ottawa to discuss how to reduce costs, while many cities country-wide are trying to rein in ballooning municipal police budgets.

Hamilton police’s budgets have come under increased scrutiny in recent years as well, as the city attempts to keep costs down across the board as much as possible.

The budget process was a bumpy ride in 2013, with council sending it back to the police board three times asking for reductions. The initial draft was more than a five-per cent increase over the year before. It was trimmed to a 3.52 per cent.

The budget to run the Hamilton Police Service in 2014 was a 2.98 per cent increase over 2013 – the lowest budget increase in 14 years.