Gun Violence in American (and Canada)

Recently, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conducted some research on a 'typical' week in several cities to get some perspective on the nature of gun violence. This was an interesting undertaking and produced some important comparative results across six cities during one week in April 2012.

What is quite remarkable is that one of those "American" cities was actually Toronto, Ontario. The Toronto Police Service has been involved with PERF for several years now and TPS chief, Bill Blair, is currently an at-large member of this organization. So, when considering the magnitude of gun violence in the United States, we can quickly see that Toronto is fortunate in that it's crime figures truly pale in comparison with other jurisdictions.

A summary of this report, as well as, some international comparisons are found in the May/June 2012 issue of PERF's newsletter, Subject to Debate:

http://www.policeforum.org/library/subject-to-debate/2012/Debate_May-June2012_web.pdf

One of the striking aspects of this material relates to the calculations of the cost of gun violence. The discussion here is based upon a fairly recent (2010) study done by the RAND Corporation which applied several different methodologies to arrive at cost estimates for crime. These estimates include various components to calculate costs, including: 1) victim costs (lost productivity, medical care, social services, property lost, and 'quality of life' estimate); 2) criminal justice costs (cost per offender at each stage of process, including police costs, prosecution costs, court costs, and costs of prison, jail, probation and parole); and 3) offender costs (medical care, costs borne by offenders' families, loss of legitimate earnings of offender).

Applying this methodology, the research results in the following cost estimates:

• Murder: $5 million per crime
• Armer Robbery: $500,000 per crime
• Aggravated Assault: $55,000 per crime

These are startling figures and while Canadian numbers will be lower than those in most major American cities, it's useful to consider the larger economic impacts of crime in our society.

One of the recommendations that the police executives assembled by PERF have put forward is the concept of "microstamping" of handgun firing pins. This has not gained much traction in the United States, but is something that Canadian police executives should lobby for as well in solidarity with their American colleagues.