With the release of the latest national crime statistics, the Canadian provinces are generally congratulating themselves on lowering crime rates. The territories, though, are silent - with very good reason. In 1999, all three reported crime rates substantially higher than any of the provinces.

    Why are crime rates so much higher in the Far North? There are a large number of factors at play, and there is no general agreement among criminologists, statisticians or those in the criminal justice field as to the answer to that question.

    First, statistics can be severely skewed by small populations - for example, a single murder in Nunavut equates to a homicide rate (per 100,000) of almost 20 times what a single murder in the city of Vancouver would. Since the statistics here are only for crimes reported to police, a willingness to report crimes by residents of a given area will also increase their crime rates even if the level of crime really hadn't increased.

    At a more basic level, there are far more police per capita in small villages than in metropolitan areas, which logically would mean that more people get caught in those villages. In terms of citizens reporting crime, a person who reports witnessing a crime in Winnipeg would be unlikely to know the criminal; in Fort Smith, the opposite would be true.

    That takes care of the excuses - "maybe crime isn't really higher." Now let's look at factors that may result in higher crime rates. Since each of these merely introduces an extremely complex subject, I present these as possible factors, for thought and discussion:

• alcohol - northern regions have a much higher per-capita consumption of alcohol. A very high percentage of calls to RCMP detachments in the territories are alcohol related.

• unemployment - unemployment has always been high in the territories. The Yukon had a June 2000 unemployment rate of 12.2%, second only to Newfoundland, which sits at 15.5%. The national average was 6.3%.

• Natives - the territories have a much higher percentage of their populations comprised of Aboriginals, who make up a far higher percentage of the Canadian prison population than any other group. Is that related to the two subjects above?

• economic disparity - while the rich and the poor in the territories are possibly no closer in financial terms than in the provinces, they are in physical terms, often living side-by-side or nearly so. Does that increase property crime rates?

• boredom - is there less to do in the territories? Why is the mischief rate in the NWT twice that of the Yukon or Nunavut?

Crime Rates per 100,000 Population

	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998
Violent Crime
Nunavut	6,531	5,636	5,591	5,662	5,879
NWT	4,826	4,665	4,579	5,354	5,063
Yukon	2,719	3,228	3,131	3,266	2,904
Property Crimes
Nunavut	7,000	7,616	6,973	5,604	4,977
NWT	7,373	7,576	7,533	6,727	7,022
Yukon	8,503	8,939	8,188	8,139	6,982
Other Criminal Code Offences
Nunavut	9,980	11,240	9,813	9,488	9,660
NWT	12,609	11,267	9,806	10,998	12,939
Yukon	7,934	7,557	8,410	9,396	8,139
Criminal Code Offences - total
Nunavut	23,510	24,492	22,377	20,754	20,517
NWT	24,808	23,508	21,919	23,079	25,024
Yukon	19,157	19,724	19,729	20,801	18,025

Nunavut did not become a territory until April 1, 1999 - these figures have been calculated by dividing NWT statistics according to current boundaries.

Although all three territories have populations well below 100,000, rates are based on this number for statistical comparison purposes.

To compare these rates with the national figures, see this chart.

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Police & Law Enforcement in Northern Canada