Keeping up with P.E.I.'s rapid growth in an era of online crime has been a struggle, say police

A surge in population on P.E.I. in the last decade has coincided with increasing crime rates, and Charlottetown police Chief Brad MacConnell says police resources are falling behind where they should be.

"Our population has surged so much," said MacConnell."It's hard for anyone to keep pace with that."

Since the launch of a provincial population strategy in 2015, P.E.I. has easily been the fastest-growing province in Canada, with a total growth of more than 20 per cent.

During that time, MacConnell said the number of calls for service hasrisen far faster than the population, with a 75 per cent increase since 2012. In the meantime, the number of officers Charlottetown Police Services employshas grownby only eight per cent.

"The population growth has put us more in a reactive stage to try to meet those demands," he said.

"Of course that's not where you want to be. You always want to be ahead of the curve."

You always want to be ahead of the curve.Charlottetown Police Chief Brad MacConnell

Increased callsaren't the only issue forces are dealing with. The nature of crime is changing too.

Today's officersare dealing with a surge ininternet-based crime, including fraud, harassment andthreats. The nonconsensual distribution of intimate images was an entirely new crime in 2017 and now generates more complaints thatrobbery.Crimes such as fraud are often perpetrated against Islanders by people who do not even live in Canada.

These are trends that require new approaches.

"We haven't seen a lot of effective policing in that space," said Prof. Tarah Hodgkinson of the criminology department at Wilfred Laurier University.

"That's not to say that any one police service isn't trying to address these issues. They just don't have training in these spaces. It requires a lot of technical understanding that we haven't, largely, given our police services."

Catching crime before it happens

Addressing these new crimes requires thinking that goes beyond finding ways to catch and prosecute perpetrators.

Prevention is more likely to be a successful approach, and that is multi-faceted. One aspect is talking to youth about how online ribbing can slide into cyberbullying or even become criminal.

That's the kind of proactive programming MacConnell said is getting less attention these days.

"Getting engagement with our youth, getting officers out in the field and having the time and the ability to connect with youth is very important," he said.

"That social capital that's developed and relationship that's developed with our youth will pay dividends."

Another approach, one that is appropriate for all age groups, is educating the public about the warning signs that you may be at risk of becoming a victim. For a decade now, RCMP on the Island have offered community groups and businesses workshops on recognizingfraud risks.

Getting those messages out is important, said Hodgkinson.

"But the police are also quite expensive," she said.

"When a starting salary is anywhere from $90,000 to $100,000 a year for a constable, versus having social worker or a student who actually specializes in computing science and fraud or someone who is less costly and actually [has] more expertise in that space, I think that actually might be more effective use of our resources and actually save us money in the long term."

Helping Islanders protect themselves

The provincial government is considering some of its options for educating youth.

Earlier this year, it started work on a cyberbullying strategy. It has consulted with community groups and police, and researched what specific harms youth might face in online spaces.

While the focus is on cyberbullying, Bobbi-Jo Flynn, director of policy for the provincial Justice Department, believes the strategy will have a broader impact.

"A lot of the early intervention and prevention tools to address cyberbullying are also effective to create protective skills and knowledge for youth related to other kinds of online cyberviolence," said Flynn.

"If we better equip youth and their caregivers to better understand how to protect themselves, to be digitally knowledgeable, to be aware and empathetic of their own behaviours and actions, that also provides a protective aspect to other kinds of risks that they might be exposed to in the online environment."

'I didn't know the impact'

P.E.I.'s Community Legal Information has already made a start on addressing cyberbullying among youth.

Using a federal grant, the group has developed a workshop for junior high school students, and is about to launch a second workshop aimed at their parents and caregivers.

Hannah Jones, CLI's cyberbullying project manager, said the youth workshop is designed to allow open and supportive conversations with youth.

While they personally experience these behaviours every day, she said, some young people are still surprised to learn about the extent of the problem and the dangers involved.

"For a lot, they're saying'I didn't know the impact that this truly had,'" said Jones.

While the focus of the workshop is cyberbullying incidents that can happen on social media, in direct messaging, and even during online gaming sessions the core message goes far beyond that.

"Cyberbullying and cyberviolence is really more an issue about healthy relationships than it is about technology. The technology is just the device. It's the behaviours and the interactions that we're really supporting youth with," said Jones.

"Fundamentally, healthy relationships are what we need in society."

She said that applies to not just close or intimate relationships, but even relationships with people we don't know that well or perhaps do not know at allwhether online or not.