Many Bramptonians comment on how much worse crime has gotten lately in Brampton. But Bramptonist wanted to know: has crime in the city really increased, or are we simply more aware of offences committed because of hyperlocal news coverage and social media?
Using crime data supplied by Peel Police Publications for Divisions 21 and 22 from 2008 through 2015, information for a select number of crimes in different categories was charted. The results are interesting.
Violent Crimes Against Persons
We can see below that total violent crimes against people are decreasing, except for sexual violations. Sex crimes–while decreasing slightly since 2012–are still up 4% since 2008.
Crimes Against Property
Total crimes against property are lower than in 2008 but have been increasing since 2013. This includes break and enters, car theft, fraud, and mischief.
Drug Crimes
The amount of drug related crimes peaked in 2011 but overall have slowly decreased since then.
Traffic Crimes
Perhaps most surprising of all is the data on motor vehicle collisions, which indicates the number of vehicular collisions are decreasing. This isn’t reflected in rising car insurance rates in Brampton, however.
We speculate that because of our high insurance prices, relatively minor collisions are not reported to police or insurance companies, and don’t appear in the data.
The data has spoken, and it’s safe to say that crime isn’t actually on the rise in Brampton. With more hyperlocal coverage of news, as well as social media causing us to see more stories and the same stories more often, a perception that crime is worsening is understandable, but we are glad to know that even with Brampton’s rapidly growing population, most of the major categories of crime show a decrease or stable numbers over the past decade.
