Map of the Week: Breaking and entering

SHUTTERSTOCK

Map: Breaking and entering rates

Map: Change in breaking and entering, 2004-8

This week, we begin an occasional series on crime, using neighbourhood-based crime statistics produced by the Toronto police. These use the City of Toronto neighbourhood boundaries, not the set produced by our neighbourhood project earlier in the year.

Before I saw the map, I expected more burglary in high-income neighbourhoods, based on the idea that wealthy people would be more likely to have things worth stealing. That turns out not to be consistently true, though the Bridle Path and Casa Loma do have high rates. The stronger relationship seems to be with areas around universities, with U of T, York and (almost) Ryerson in areas with very high burglary rates.

Here are the top 20:

1 University
2 Bay Street Corridor
3 Kensington-Chinatown
4 Moss Park
5 Bridle Path-Sunnybrook-York Mills
6 East End-Danforth
7 Casa Loma
8 York University Heights
9 Annex
10 Church-Yonge Corridor
11 Waterfront Communities-The Island
12 Rosedale-Moore Park
13 Woodbine Corridor
14 Clairlea-Birchmount
15 West Humber-Clairville
16 South Riverdale
17 Little Portugal
18 Roncesvalles
19 The Beaches
20 Forest Hill South

It’s an odd mixture of areas, and I’d be curious to know what readers make of it.

One striking pattern is the fall in breaking and entering between 2004 and 2008 in most areas.

This trend has been noticed elsewhere in Canada, in the United States and in England. Burglary rates in the United States are somewhat more than half what they were in 1988.

Two business/economics blogs (link, link) have floated the idea that the decline in burglaries is linked to falling prices of manufactured goods – in other words, that burglars are a casualty of free trade.

The maps show five years of burglary data for all 140 neighbourhoods, as seen below:

Comments

[Kendall Taylor]

The Geography Department of Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough did a similar study in our Geomatics course a few years ago. We found more B&E in less financially advantaged areas and in areas of higher reward (commercial). Interestingly, there was a slightly lower incidence of crime around coffee shops (not kidding).

[Marcel Fortin]

You might want to reword the following sentence on this map. It's a bit confusing: "Break and enter offences as a rate per 1,000 by neighbourhood". It sounds like you mean you're mapping at a rate of 1000 break-ins. I realize you mean 1000 people, but I only saw that once I clicked on one of the neighbourhoods.

[X. X.]

These maps are not accurate. They only show "reported" break ins.

I had a break-in (the locked door was physically broken down, and the lock was broken), and items were stolen from me by a roommate.

When I had the police attend, they refused to file charges, because the person lived in my apartment.

Because the police walked away, the roommate then threatened to kill me, and proceeded to rob me.

I called the police again, and they did not show up.

So, no "reported" break in?

This happened on Mill Road, in Etobicoke. A neighbourhood which is listed as having only 1 break-in per 1000. Maybe police like to keep numbers artificially low?

I am suing the police department for the value of the goods stolen from me, plus the costs associated with that incident.

I wonder if after I win the lawsuit, will this be reported as a break-in?

[Eddie]

There is certainly plenty of crime on Bay Street. Not all of it burglary, but theft of another kind.

[pcain]

Marcel Fortin -

This change has been made.

[Chris]

The middle-class is vulnerable because they tend to be complacent about security, while wealthier ones tend to be more careful about security. The casual thief will tend towards middle-class houses for this very reason. Complacent but still have stuff worth taking (although even poorer households usually have a computer or a DVD player or something worth taking)

Most of the high crime areas here have heavy transient populations and a lot of people passing through, with most lying either in busy downtown areas or around institutions that generate a lot of "outsider" traffic. University Heights has York University and its associated student population, Sunnybrook has the hospital but also York-Glendon, The areas around U of T and Ryerson, and Casa Loma which contains George Brown but also has a lot of U of T students - the Iroquois shoreline is really the northern edge of the student population, not the railway line that forms the neighbourhood boundary.

These neighbourhoods simply lack the "eye on the street" that keeps crime down. It's not practical to watch strangers when there are so many strangers and short-term residents passing through. Most of the top crime areas also lack the will to keep this eye on the street, particularly in public housing projects or the student ghettos, where people tend to "look the other way" when they see suspicious activity.

[Sandra]

I don't know how accurate these statistics are. In my neighbourhood (Keele and St. Clair) the police simply don't show up -- even when we report burglaries and break-ins. Three months ago one of my neighbours called the police when he saw a car break-in still in progress. No officers ever responded.

These statistics may well be meaningless.