The rise and fall of crime in Abbotsford British Columbia /

Therefore, Abbotsford will serve as the primary case study for this report as the evolution of crime in the region will be examined in detail in an effort to both corroborate the ubiquitous decline of criminality and to contextualize Abbotsford within the global crime drop. [...] Past research on crime rates has indicated that the proportion of crime in a region maintains a certain degree of equilibrium so that ebbs and flows in the crime rate are ephemeral with the ratio of crime inevitably regressing to the mean (Narayan, Nielsen, and Smyth, 2010). [...] Therefore, any examination of crime rates ought to include an analysis of the proportion of violent crime, rather than the assurance that the overall crime rate is indicative of the breadth of violent criminal aggression. [...] Indeed, traditional crime rates are determined by dividing the count of total criminal infractions by the number of residents living in the region; however, the population of a city may not accurately convey the true magnitude of offenders and victims in the area. [...] It is readily apparent that due to the aforementioned systemic issues in the production, elucidation, and operationalization of crime, there is a need for a more accurate understanding of the prevalence of crime in Canada, as well as refined measures for determining true rates of crime and victimization (Nazaretian and Merolla, 2013; Boivin, 2013).