And it’s been like that for some number of years without any sort of fundamental reform, or enormous police/prosecutor budget increases, in sight.
From that perspective it’s amazing any car thefts gets solved at all…
>Teen pleads guilty to role in deadly Etobicoke mass shooting, gets bail ahead of sentence
>Axe-wielding suspect out on bail within hours of Vancouver stranger attack
>Nearly half of 124 arrested by Ontario carjacking task force were on bail
Also, some jurisdictions have been known to engage in a practice where criminals are charged with lesser crimes in order to make the violent crime numbers look good.
e.g. Whether there are 1000 stabbing victims per year, or 5000, a low clearance rate means there are still many victims that can only pound sand, without even a remote prospect of seeing any action taken.
I'm not saying to ignore the problems, but it's important to get a better perspective.
Anyone proposing extra resources to be spent or diverted to car thefts would not be taken seriously, if it’s clearly insufficient to even clear most violent cases.
Sources:
https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
For murders and serious violent crimes like stabbings and robber/assaults resulting in major injuries, or for serious thefts, in a country like Canada or the U.S. i'd believe the numbers are. Very few people in these countries, where perception of police as useful more or less exists, would fail to report such crimes.
On the other hand, just to showcase a counterpoint, in countries like the one I live in (Mexico) even violent crimes and major thefts often don't go reported simply because in many parts, police are considered so useless (or even sometimes collusive with criminals and thus counterporductive) that even for serious things, they're not contacted unless absolutely necessary.
Even with these tendencies however, you'd be surprised how often people do go through the formality of filing a report just in case it turns up a result, particularly for murders and kidnappings, where desperation obligates them.
Unfortunately the clearance rate is similar in the US as well. This source is a bit outdated violent crimes had a 45% clearance rate in 2019: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...