Crime creates a gap in politics

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/06/2022 (873 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NOT a day goes by that I don’t read about crime in Winnipeg, often violent and usually perpetrated on innocent people. It’s easy to become desensitized to this grim daily drumbeat.

Just a few days ago, a woman was followed off a bus at 1:30 a.m. by three teens, one of whom was armed with a knife. They (allegedly) attacked and robbed the woman, and she had to be treated for her injuries when an ambulance arrived.

In 2020, Zachary Fitzsimmons spotted a group of men bullying a younger boy outside the Maryland Hotel. He told the group to leave the boy alone; they did, but then turned their wrath on Fitzsimmons.

Fitzsimmons was smashed across the head several times with a retractable baton. Another assailant struck him nine times in the head with a drywall hammer. At one point, this tool (Google Image it if you want to truly understand what occurred here) was lodged in Fitzsimmons’ head. So ferocious was the attack that Fitzsimmons’ eye was dislodged from his head. He endured rounds of surgeries and now lives with a steel plate in his head.

In 2018, 29-year-old university student and server Brittney Thomas-Ljungberg, was on her way to have dim sum with friends in the Exchange District when she was randomly attacked, punched directly in the right eye while wearing sunglasses.

The primary surgeon who treated Thomas-Ljungberg reported her eye was “popped open like a squished grape.” She was forced to drop out of her university courses but continued to wait tables while wearing a massive eye patch and lacking depth perception. After several complicated surgeries, Thomas-Ljungberg beat the odds and regained sight in her right eye.

What is one to think of these stories? Not surprisingly, learning about crime in one’s community is associated with increased fear of becoming a victim of violence. Exposure to these stories also leads to avoidance behaviours: people adjust their behaviours in response to the perception their community is unsafe.

This can be particularly true when people feel affinity with the victims of violence.

How many people in Winnipeg take the bus from work late at night and now glance behind their shoulders while rushing home? This story reminds us of how the victims of random crime are often low-income and already vulnerable. People driving their BMWs home to River Heights at 1:30 a.m. have much less to worry about than those riding the bus after a late shift.

How many Winnipeggers have responded to a perceived bullying situation, recalling Fitzsimmons’ extreme plight, by looking down and walking past?

How many people have felt unsafe while walking in the Exchange District and, recalling Thomas-Ljungburg, or decided it might be better to just stay home and order in?

We know crime is a major concern of Winnipeggers and other Canadians. What’s surprising is how few politicians are talking about it in ways that speak plainly and directly to the concerns law-abiding people have.

Political scientists distinguish between nascent and politicized divisions in society. There are all sorts of divisions in society that could potentially structure political debate, but they don’t because politicians do not take sides on them. These are nascent divisions. Politicized divisions, in contrast, are activated by politicians who take sides, disagree with one another, and fiercely advocate for their side. Politicized divisions are the issues politicians fight election campaigns over.

Crime used to be a politicized issue in Canada, and still is in many other democracies. In the not-so-distant past, right-wing parties in federal and provincial politics, buoyed by public perceptions that both the courts and governments were more concerned with the rights of criminals than victims, championed a broad range of “tough-on-crime” policies, including the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

Indeed, the shocking 2005 Boxing Day shootout between gangs in Toronto that resulted in the death of a 15-year-old bystander likely shifted votes to Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime Conservative party, helping him to win the 2006 federal election.

But politicians in 2022, for several reasons, appear reluctant to treat crime as a serious issue deserving of governments’ full attention. Even when addressing these themes, politicians pull their punches. One might think that’s appropriate, but here’s the thing: both nature and politics abhor a vacuum. And with every story I read about random violent crime in this country, it feels as if we’re just one entrepreneurial politician away from full-fledged, politicized crime politics.

In a democracy, people have a right to be concerned about whatever concerns them. And people want to open the newspaper and not immediately be confronted by stories of random, violent crime in their communities. If they don’t want to be washed away in a tide of anti-crime sentiment, I’d recommend politicians begin more clearly addressing this issue.

Royce Koop is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Centre for Social Science Research and Policy.