What's the real reason for the drop in crime rates?

When the news is good, everyone wants a share of the credit. Through most of Canada — including in Red Deer — crime rates continue their steady decline.

Fear of rampant criminality on our streets is as high as ever, but with each year that passes, the foundation of those fears also declines.

Both the rates of crime, and the the severity of crimes have been dropping for more than two decades. The national crime rate today is about the same as it was when I graduated high school — a time when people routinely left their cars unlocked and running in cold weather, and walked on shopping trips through their downtowns unconcerned.

Yes, I'm that told. So old, that I remember when downtown was the only place where you could shop, actually. We'll return to that a bit later.

During its time in government, the federal Conservatives have introduced at least 30 bills designed to crack down on crime. If there is a real correlation between declining crime rates and prime minister Stephen Harper's campaign to get tough on crime, then some credit is due.

But it's all certainly come at a cost.

In the past 10 years, crime rates have dropped 28 per cent, says the most recent Stats Canada report. That's the period of time wherein the 30 anti-crime bills were sent through Parliament. In that same period of time, though, the cost of fighting crime has risen 23 per cent — to $20 billion a year.

Three quarters of that $20 billion cost falls on the provinces.

The most expensive change is Harper's controversial mandatory minimum sentencing law. Long mandatory prison sentences are costly.

Has it been a good investment? Is one reason for the continuing drop in crime (and crime severity) due to the fact that more of Canada's violent criminals are already locked up?

Right now, the answer seems to depend on which social scientist or demographer you ask.

Here at home, Red Deer spends just over $2 million a year on policing.

Last year, when Macleans declared Red Deer the most dangerous city in Canada, crime was still in decline. But fear of crime led to a public outcry and a petition to hire more officers. That, and a city council review of whether the RCMP was really doing its job here.

The result was confirmation of our relationship with the RCMP and the hiring of eight more officers, though they won't be showing up for duty until October.

But let's get back to the Red Deer of the 1970s.

Robberies and car thefts were definitely on the social radar back then, but the fear quotient was no where near as high as it is today, even though crime rates are roughly the same then as now.

I'm going to suggest people walked with a lot less fear through our downtown in those days, because everybody walked through our downtown in those days.

The Bay, Eaton's, Woodward's, they were all downtown. Everybody who ever went on a shopping trip went downtown. So did the police. We felt as safe there as we feel in the hallways of our big malls today.

Could it be possible that as we emptied our downtown region of shoppers and walkers, a part of that gap was filled with the growing underclass created by our changing society? The homeless, the drug-addicted and the mentally ill.

That is where the cheap housing could be found, and that's where the social agencies that serve them came to be located.

Even though crime rates in these two eras are about the same (though on the rise in the 1970s, until peaking in 1991), the reduction in general street traffic made the social underclass more visible. And fear of this underclass just grew out of that.

Fast forward to today, and Red Deer is evolving. Local police are putting a much higher emphasis on being visible downtown, and I will suggest that accounts greatly for the big decline that I notice in panhandling, on-the-street drug trade and open intoxication in the area.

Better community policing, and a determination by city council to revive and rebuild the downtown area are having a good effect.

I doubt we'll see a major department store downtown again. That's not how people tend to shop these days.

But the program of building Riverlands, for instance, as a primarily residential zone is going to accelerate the decline in crime in the whole of downtown.

That's going to keep Red Deer the safe, progressive place that it is, as much as our crime-fighting federal government ever will.

And for less cost to taxpayers, too.