RSS Feed“Scarlem” has a Bad Rap
Scarborough, the notorious neighborhood in Toronto, may not deserve its bad reputation.
The Toronto Star reports,
As for policing, Scarborough has 20 per cent of the city’s police officers but 24 per cent of the population. But the students also found that Scarborough has a lower crime rate than the rest of the city, which might explain the lighter policing.
Some people might want to know where the less crime fact comes from. They got their data from the Toronto Police Annual Statistic Report.
They were able to do this because police Divisions 41, 42 and 43 conform to the old city of Scarborough, so we can add up crime and population in those division and compare it with crime and population in all other divisions. Now I slightly disagree with their numbers, for some reason they use 2001 population from the census as opposed to the 2006 estimates in the actual report. Here’s a table comparing their numbers and my numbers for the Toronto crime rate (excluding traffic offences):
| My Numbers | Their Numbers | |
| All Toronto | 7.41% | 7.19% |
| Non-Scarborough | 7.8% | 7.64% |
| Scarborough | 6.18% | 5.77% |
As you can see, the numbers are in the same ballpark– Scarborough has less crime. Nor is this a case of Scarborough having less, say, credit card fraud and being a violent hellhole. Here’s another chart, this one of the violent crime rate:
| My Numbers | |
| All Toronto | 1.26% |
| Non-Scarborough | 1.31% |
| Scarborough | 1.12% |
So it seems the study was right, Scarborough is unfairly maligned.
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3 Responses to ““Scarlem” has a Bad Rap”
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That’s just reported crime. That’s not how people determine whether a place a safe or not. Most times that people get assaulted on the street, it isn’t reported.
If Scarborough unreports crimes then it might not be as safe as the report showed. How can we test this?
I think there is a natural experiment as there is a category of “Selected Offences Against Police Officers.” We can assume that crime will not be underreported in this category. Unfortunately, the 2006 Annual Statistic Report does not break those numbers down by district. I will try to find out that data and report back here.
I’ll know by late March if the Police will release that data. Stay tuned.