DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS AND CRIME IN THE PROVINCE OF ALBERTA

Abstract

We present forecasts of crime rates in the Province of Alberta, Canada for the decade 2010 to 2020. The results suggest that rates of all types of crime in the province will drop between 2010 and 2020, largely because of the aging of the population. Our forecasts of crime rates rest on three projections of the age-specific and gender-specific composition of the population using sets of assumptions about fertility, mortality, and net migration. We then estimate the rates of total crime, violent crime, property crime, and other crime by taking the age composition of the projected populations into account and presuming that the age-specific crime rates observed from 2006 to 2009 remain constant.