Police say about 75 people commit an inordinate amount of crime in Calgary. Who are they? | CBC News

It’s a statistic floated around by high-ranking police officers and Calgary’s new mayor — a relatively small number of people committing a whole lot of crime.

Ahead of a Calgary police downtown safety blitz Nov. 5, Supt. Scott Boyd said the police have a “high system user group that’s roughly around 75 individuals … [who] do a disproportionate amount of crime on any given day throughout Calgary.”

During his campaign, then-mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas used a slightly different number, pledging in his platform to “strengthen community policing with a crackdown on Calgary’s top 100 repeat violent offenders.”

But who are they?

“High system user is a term that we have coined for individuals who statistically and factually have initiated literally hundreds of calls for service based on social disorder and crime-related behaviour,” said Insp. Jason Bobrowich.

“There really isn’t a particular profile of a person. It’s totally based on behaviour patterns that we have identified … [we’ve] seen them perpetually going through the criminal justice system and repeating the cycles.”

As for what types of crimes or disturbances they might be committing, Bobrowich said it runs the gamut from public intoxication or illicit drug use, to theft or possession of stolen property, all the way up to more serious crimes like assault or assault with a weapon. 

During the downtown blitz, officers roamed streets, making arrests, issuing tickets and referring individuals in need to services intended to help them.

Bobrowich said officers were not specifically looking for the habitual offenders, but the patrols did occur in areas where they might be.

As an example, police said in a media release they received reports of a convenience store robbery during the downtown blitz. Officers arrested a suspect who is a so-called high system user and was allegedly in breach of his bail conditions.

Conventional wisdom

The notion that many offences are committed by a small group of offenders is not new, but rather conventional wisdom in the field of criminology, according to Doug King, a criminal justice professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“They tend to not just repeat, but they tend to repeat more often,” King said.

“So they might make out maybe 25 per cent of the crimes that are committed, and they are about 10 per cent of the offender population.”

Conversely, he said the opposite tends to hold true — that the majority of people who commit a crime will not reoffend.

King agrees with police that there is no one profile that can be applied to who these offenders might be or what might motivate them.

“These people can be from extraordinarily different walks of life. And so to try and find an explanation for criminality for all of them, if you could do that, you’d put the discipline of criminology out of business,” King said. 

In some cases, that criminality might start as habitual behaviour as a youth and continue into adulthood, King said.

Why are they still reoffending?

Calgary Police Chief Katie McLellan said things need to change within the justice system to reduce how often the same perpetrators might be reoffending.

“When we take these individuals before a justice of the peace and they are those high-risk repeat offenders, that’s where we come forward and talk about, there needs to be another plan, they can’t continue to be released, and they can’t continue to commit the same offences over and over again,” McLellan told The Homestretch.

Bobrowich said Calgary police have a “robust” tracking process. Police will monitor their upcoming court dates and dedicated point persons will attend their hearings, keeping track of when they may be back on the streets. 

So if police know who these individuals are, and have an idea of where they might be — should it not be easier to stop them from reoffending?

It’s not quite that simple, says King.

“If you want to get those 75 [people], you’ve got to get evidence that they actually committed the offences. And that’s harder than people tend to think,” King said.

In other words, just because a suspect might be a familiar face, there needs to be enough accompanying evidence of the offence to hold up in court.

Then comes issues related to bail, as well as remand centres that King says can be overpacked.

“It’s a system, right? And you can’t blame one element of the system for the problems of the system,” King said. 

Arthur Green, spokesperson for Mike Ellis, Alberta’s minister of public safety and emergency services, addressed remand centre concerns in a statement.

“Alberta Correctional Services manages inmate populations with both daily operations and long-term planning in mind. When there’s a sudden increase in one area, we co-ordinate across the province to provide support and keep operations running smoothly.”

The statement also took aim at the bail system.

“For far too long the criminal justice system has been unable to properly protect public safety, due to Ottawa’s ineffective bail and parole system,” said Green in the statement.

“If Ottawa continues to follow Alberta’s advice, collects meaningful data, and invests in courts and prosecutors, we have a chance to finally make Canada safer again.”

Last month, the federal government announced plans to overhaul the bail system to make it tougher for violent, repeat offenders to be released.

A government official told reporters during a briefing that the changes would legislate that courts “not release an accused when it is against the public interest or when detention is needed to protect victims or witnesses.” 

Holistic approach

Bobrowich said because bail reforms on the table seem more aimed toward very dangerous offenders, they might not apply to the types of reoffenders Calgary police are talking about.

For those individuals, Bobrowich said police are focusing on a more holistic approach to offer them supports and better integrate them into society.

And he said it’s a tactic that is working, with some spending longer stints in the community without reoffending.

“We’ve had great success with a number of the high system users in order to move them through treatment programs, facilitate court outcomes and then reconnect them with family members as well, who are willing and able to provide positive supports for them,” Bobrowich said.

Krysia Przepiorka is a criminal defence lawyer and board chair of the Indigenous Justice Centre Society of Alberta.

She said the goal should be to break down barriers — like homelessness, mental health and addiction — that can see vulnerable populations overrepresented in the justice system.

And she said the answer is not in incarceration.

“There are individuals where jail isn’t solving anything, but for giving them a break from society, and that’s not solving any underlying issues that may have brought that individual into the justice system,” Przepiorka said.

“It’s really a much bigger problem than I think any of our systems have the capacity at this moment to really delve into.”