Map of the Week: Drug charges

CANADIAN PRESS

Map: Average annual drug charges per 1,000 residents, 2004-2008

This week continues our occasional series of neighbourhood crime maps with a look at drug charges.

The most obvious thing about the map is the higher rates of drug charges more or less downtown, roughly in an area bounded by Queen/King, Bathurst, Bloor and Parliament, more or less. The missing piece of information is how many of these charges were laid against residents of any given neighbourhood, and how many against people from outside.

Looking more broadly at the city, we see the familiar check-mark shape extending diagonally down though the west end, through the downtown and up again through Scarborough. This appears on many other maps, including this one and this one.

The rate is averaged over five years because of significant year-to year fluctuation in many areas.

The map shows five years of data for all 140 neighbourhoods, as seen below:

Map(s): Vehicle theft and homicide rates

Map: Five-year homicide rates by neighbourhood

Map: Vehicle theft rates, 2008

This week, we continue our crime series 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.

Vehicle theft is strongly concentrated in the northwest of the city, a pattern we saw more crudely in a division-based map last year. A four-neighbourhood clump centres more or less on the De Havilland plant. West Humber-Clairville, in the city’s northwest corner, has the highest rate, one of only two neighbourhoods with a rate above 10 2008 vehicle thefts per 1,000. (Yorkdale-Glen Park is the other. )

Here are the top 10:

1 West Humber-Clairville
2 Yorkdale-Glen Park
3 Humber Summit
4 York University Heights
5 Newtonbrook West
6 Clanton Park
7 L'Amoreaux
8 Downsview-Roding-CFB
9 Clairlea-Birchmount
10 Islington-City Centre West

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I took all five years worth of data to get something recognizable as a neighbourhood-scale homicide rate.

High homicide rates (by Toronto standards) concentrate in four areas: Downsview/Rexdale/Jane-Finch; Parkdale and Niagara; the east downtown; and northwestern Scarborough.

Here are the top 10:

1 Elms-Old Rexdale
2 Black Creek
3 Moss Park
4 Danforth Village - Toronto
5 Morningside
6 Rustic
7 Glenfield-Jane Heights
8 Regent Park
9 Church-Yonge Corridor
10 Cabbagetown-South St. James Town

Individual homicides (omitting 2004 and including 2009 to date) can be seen here.

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

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: