Archive for ‘Demographics’

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January 19, 2009

Toronto Police Services Board ordered to release crime data

Last summer, The Toronto Star’s investigative series on Crime and Punishment showed incarceration rates in east-end Toronto (between Riverdale and the Beach) comparable to that of some of the City’s Priority Neighbourhood Areas. It was just one of the startling findings, found through hard data analysis – the sort of data to which most researchers do not have access.

This week, pursuing an appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal, reporter Jim Rankin and the Star‘s investigative team won another victory for researchers interested in looking at the interplay of crime data with other social variables.

Back in May 2003, using a Freedom of Information request, Rankin requested police records on arrests and occurrences, with identifying information removed, in order to do an analysis of the prevalence of racial profiling. When the Toronto Police Services Board refused, Rankin appealed to the Privacy Commissioner. The Police Board was ordered to comply with the request. Instead, they appealed and won at the next level. Last week, on appeal, Rankin (and the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner) won the case against the Toronto Police Services Board. The Police Board was ordered to comply and to reimburse court costs to Rankin.

The request for the police data was found to be reasonable and appropriate under the Freedom of Information Act,  in accordance with the principle of open government processes.  As underscored by the Supreme Court in a different case,  Dagg v. Canada (Minister of Finance), “Transparency and accountability are vital to the democratic process.”

The pursuit of this data is a bit of a Holy Grail. Researchers who work at a neighbourhood level look to crime data as an important part of the social profiles of neighbourhood, its residents, and the shape of any program interventions. Yet, for years, I have sat in meetings with other social researchers who described the runarounds and their failed efforts to access police crime data. It’s not that the data isn’t there. One Superintendent I met at a public meeting assured me he looked at that kind of data regularly. So how come the pursuit felt more like Monty Python’s Holy Grail?

The Toronto Star has been one of the first to be successful in the quest for this sort of data, initially tracking their own news reports and mapping Toronto homicides in Googlemaps. Perhaps provoked to it, the Police Services website soon began to publish similar data, with disclaimers.

Rankin and the Star‘s investigative team deserve much praise for their faithful quest of these hidden treasures.

Posted in Blog menu, Demographics, Inequality, Neighbourhoods, Social Capital | 2 Comments »

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October 21, 2008

Racial divisions tracking income polarization

Three recent learnings from the Ontario Nonprofit Housing Association conference scared me about the future of our city:

I was sitting through a presentation I had seen a few times, about the growing concentrations of poverty across the city and the high income enclaves that were also emerging, when I was struck to hear how substantially these aligned with the emerging racial division in the city. Just as income has polarized even over the past five years, so have the racial divisions. Neighbourhoods which were mainly white at the 2001 census are now likely to be even more white, according to research being led by Professor David Hulchanski at the University of Toronto.

So, the next morning, as I sat through an anti-racism workshop at the same conference, we were asked if we saw evidence of racism in our communities. Hulchanski’s work shows that, as the city’s foreign-born population now hits 50% of residents and people of colour will soon be a majority of the population, many white people, especially those living in high income areas, are less and less likely to have contact in their day-to-day lives with those from another racial background.

Finally, in another session, we talked about the dynamics of what happens when mixed neighbourhoods disappear. Like the idea of supermajorites, as described by political scientists, when populations become more homogenous and ideas and social mores are not challenged, they tend to become more extreme in their positions.

All this means that urban residents, living within increasingly racially and economically segregated neighbourhoods, will become increasingly isolated and separate in their world views and experience.

As I said, scary.

David Hulchanski’s work can be found at maps of city neighbourhoods with very high concentrations of white and visible minority populations and a recent presentation.

Posted in Demographics, Diversity, Inequality, Mapping, Neighbourhoods | 2 Comments »

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October 9, 2008

City of Toronto Community Services Strategy

The City of Toronto is developing a Community Services Strategy and, on October 7, over 200 representatives from the city’s community agencies were invited to help shape it. Hunkered around tables just north of Flemingdon Park, participants spent the day brainstorming together. City staff gathered the input as it was generated and fed it back at the start of the next rounds of discussion. 

Building on the work of the Strong Neighbourhoods Taskforce (City of Toronto: Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force) and, less acknowledged, the United Way’s Neighbourhood Vitality Index (A Neighbourhood Vitality Index: An Approach to Measuring …), the strategy will look at the services and supports which should be available across Toronto’s neighbourhoods. If a set of benchmarks can be developed that identify missing services and local supports, presumably, the City and others can target resources more effectively. It will also help to answer some City Councillors questions of “when is enough, enough?”  Through this exercise, the answer of “enough” will be more quantifiable – and justifiable.

Research and policy staff have a lot of ground to cover before they bring the initial report to the Community Development and Recreation Committee on November 14. But they have made a good start.

Posted in Demographics, Neighbourhoods | Leave a Comment »

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