Table Of ContentNORTH AMERICAN SOCIAL REPORT
VOLUME II: CRIME, JUSTICE, AND POLITICS
Volume I: Foundations, Population, and Health
Chapter 1. The Foundations of Social Reporting
Chapter 2. Population Structure
Chapter 3. Death, Disease and Health Care
Volume II: Crime, Justice, and Politics
Chapter 4. Crime and Justice
Chapter 5. Politics and Organizations
Volume III: Science, Education, and Recreation
Chapter 6. Science and Technology
Chapter 7. Education
Chapter 8. Recreation
Volume IV: Environment, Transportation, and Economics
Chapter 9. Natural Environment and Resources
Chapter 10. Transportation and Communication
Chapter 11. Economics
Volume V: Housing, Religion, and Morality
Chapter 12. Housing
Chapter 13. Religion
Chapter 14. Morality and Social Customs
Chapter 15. Conclusion
NORTH AMERICAN
SOCIAL REPORT
A Comparative Study of the Quality ofL ife in
Canada and the USAfrom 1964 to 1974
by
ALEX C. MICHALOS
University a/Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Volume Two
Crime, Justice, and Politics
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
DORDRECHT: HOLLAND I BOSTON: U.S.A.
LONDON: ENGLAND
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Michalos, Alex C.
North American social report.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
CONTENTS: VoL 1. Foundations, population, and health. -
VoL 2. Crime,justice, and politics.
1. United States-Social conditions-1960- -Collected
works. 2. Social indicators-United States-Collected works. 3.
Canada-Social conditions-Collected works. 4. Social indicators
Canada-Collected works. I. Title.
HN60.MS 971 80-94
ISBN-13:978-90-277-108S-7 e-ISBN-13:978-94-009-9002-9
DOl: 10.10071978-94-009-9002-9
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Boston Inc., Lincoln Building,
160 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland.
D. Reidel Publishing Company is a member of the Kluwer Group.
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 1980 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized m. any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
CHAPTER 4: CRIME AND JUSTICE 1
1. Introduction 1
2. Criminal justice, tolerance and discretion 2
3. Limitations of criminal justice statistics 7
4. Crime Index Offences 12
5. Crimes of violence 15
6. Murder and the death penalty 17
7. Rape, aggravated assault and robbery 22
8. Property crime 24
9. Overview and remarks on causes 28
10. White Collar crime 29
11. Offences cleared 34
12. Subjects charged 40
13. Convictions and the courts 45
14. Prisoners and penalties 50
15. Lawyers, law enforcement personnel and expenditures 54
16. Summary and results 61
Notes 66
Tables, Figures, and Charts 74
CHAPTER 5: POLITICS AND ORGANIZATIONS 151
1. Introduction 151
2. Models of good behaviour 152
3. Voter turnout and the franchise 153
4. Political activities 156
5. Campaign spending 158
6. Political efficacy 160
7. Trust and confidence 161
8. Freedom of information 164
9. Heads of state 167
10. Aid to developing countries 170
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
11. United Nations 173
12. Military expenditures 174
13. Vietnam and international relations 176
14. In the shade of the elephant 179
15. Government expenditures 183
16. Union support and distrust 183
17. Industrial disputes 186
18. Summary and results 188
Notes 192
Tables, Figures, and Charts 198
INDEX OF NAMES 245
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 249
For Theodore,
With love and confidence
that tomorrow is in good hands
PREFACE
For readers who intend to read this volume without reading the first, some in
troductory remarks are in order about the scope of the work and the strategy
used in all five volumes to measure the quality of life. In the frrst chapter of
Volume I, I reviewed the relevant recent literature on social indicators and so
cial reporting, and explained all the general difficulties involved in such work.
It would be redundant to repeat that discussion here, but there are some
fundamental points that are worth mentioning. Readers who fmd this account
too brief should consult the longer discussion.
The basic question that will be answered in this work is this: Is there
a difference in the quality of life in Canada and the United States of America,
and if so, in which country is it better? Alternatively, one could put the
question thus: If one individual were randomly selected out of Canada and
another out of the United States, would there be important qualitative
differences, and if so, which one would probably be better om To simplify
matters, I often use the terms Canadian' and 'American' as abbreviations
for 'a randomly selected resident' of Canada or the United States, respec
tively.
The time frame selected for analysis is roughly the decade from 1964 to
1974. Within this decade, the smallest time frame considered is a year long,
because most of the statistics used appear on a yeady basis. The smallest
spatial frames used are typically the whole countries. When material is drawn
from national opinion polls, usually Alaska and Hawaii are omitted from
the USA and the Yukon and Northwest Territories are omitted from Canada.
Although more precise comparisons could have been drawn if smaller spatial
frames had been selected (e.g. regions, counties, Standard Metropolitan
Areas, etc.), each additional cut would expand the treatise and contr.\ct
the data base. For these and other reasons no smaller frames were selected.
Given these broad parameters of time and space, the next step was tl.e
selection of appropriate areas of concern. The following thirteen were selected,
largely on the basis of the availability of data in each area and a general
consensus that has been emerging in the literature: population; death, disease
and health care; housing; crime and justice; leisure activities; transportation
and communication; education; science and technology; government and
x PREFACE
organizations; natural environment and resources; economics; religion; moral
ity and.social customs.
In each of the thirteen areas of concern, statistical measures called 'social
indicators' are identified. Some of these measures involve publicly observable
things like births and deaths, immigrants, automobiles and national parks.
Others involve personal experiences like happiness, satisfaction, preference
and belief. The former sorts of indicators are usually referred to as 'objective'
and the latter are called 'subjective'. Social indicators are divisible into three
broad classes. First, there will be positive indicators which are such that most
people will assume that if their indicator-values increase, some facet of the
quality of life is improving, e.g. elderly citizens' incomes and minority-group
educational attainment. Second, there will be negative indicators which are
such that most people will assume that if their indicator-values increase, some
facet of the quality of life is deteriorating, e.g. infant mortality rates and
murder rates. (Notice that an indicator is here regarded as positive or negative
not in virtue of whether or not its values in fact increase or decrease, but only
in virtue of whether or not one would like its values to increase or decrease,
i.e. not in virtue of the fact but in virtue of the desirability of an increase or
decrease in its values.) Third, there will be indicators which are regarded as
unclear because either (a) most people will not be willing or able to say
whether bigger indicator-values indicate a better or worse state of affairs, or
(b) there is serious disagreement about whether bigger indicator-values indicate
a better or worse state of affairs. In the case of welfare payments,for example,
people do not know what to say because as the values increase there may be
an increase of people in need of such assistance, which is bad; while, at the
same time, there is an increase in the amount of assistance given, which is
good. In the case of divorce rates, on the other hand, many people know
exactly what they want to say, and they happen to disagree with what some
other people want to say.
So far as positive and negative indicators are concerned, the preferred or
preferable direction of movement of indicator-values is determined. It is
precisely the determination of the direction in which the indicator-values
ought to be moving (which is here identified with the direction in which most
people, given my information, would prefer them to move) that classifies an
indicator as positive or negative.
I refer to the upward or downward movement of an indicator-value as its
'flow-value' or 'flow' for short, and contrast this with its value at any point in
time, which I call its 'stock-value' or 'stock' for short. For example, an annual
infant mortality rate per 1000 live birth~ may have a stock-value of 25 for
PREFACE xi
one year and 10% increase or flow-value from that year to the next. Since
it is generally agreed that the lower the infant mortality rate, the better, an
increase of 10% would mean some deterioration has occurred, i.e. so far as
this one indicator is concerned, we would not be as well-off as we were.
I measure the comparative or relative quality of life in the evaluative sense
in Canada and the United States as follows. Every pair of stock-values for
every positive or negative indicator and every pair of flow-values is examined.
Then:
(1) Score one point per year for every year to the country whose stock
value is preferable.
(2) Score one point per year for every year to the country whose flow
value (annual percent change) is preferable.
(3) Sum the points to obtain a fmal score for each country for all in
dicators.
(4) The fmal scores are measures of the comparative or relative quality of
life in each country, and the country with the highest score has the highest
quality of life.
The meaningofthese scores should be clear. For example, because Canada's
violent crime rate for 1964 is lower than that of the United States, Canada
gets one point. Because Canada's violent crime rate grew more slowly than
that of the United States from 1964 to 1965, Canada gets another point. If
the stock or flow-values for both countries had been the same, no points
would have been awarded. Although the scarcity of subjective indicators
occasionally requires some other modifications of our procedure, basically
this is how it works for (1) and (2). The other modifications will be explained
whenever they occur.
According to (3) and (4), all the points are added for each country and
the results are then inspected. For example, suppose the score for all our
indicators is 1200 for Canada and 900 for the United States. That means that
looking at well over 2100 matched pairs of stock and flow indicator-values
and repeatedly asking the question "Is Canada or the United States better off
with respect to these two values?", 1200 times the answer is 'Canada' and
900 times 'United States'. Nothing could be much simpler than that.
Simplicity is one thing; simplemindedness another. Several questions abou~
this strategy demand attention before we proceed. First: Is it misleading
or incorrect to refer to this strategy as a method of measuring the relative
quality of life in the two countries? Insofar as it is correct to say that one can
measure the case load of a social worker by counting his cases, the output of
a poet by counting his poems and the population of a city by counting its
