On any given day in Canada, on any busy city bus, on any main street, take a look around. There are criminals among us — about 10 per cent of adults. Picture the 50 people on the bus, and ask yourself, which five are criminals?

Many Canadians identify the wrong people.

In a national survey, Torstar asked Canadians how many people with a Canadian criminal record are visible minority, including aboriginals.

The average response: About one in three. The correct answer: One in six.

The real answer comes from a Torstar analysis of an RCMP database containing the criminal histories of 2.9 million people, obtained in a freedom of information request. It shows that the percentage of “non-whites” with a criminal record is 16.7 per cent — below 2006 Census data on the total percentage of visible minorities and aboriginal groups in Canada (20.0). The average response in the survey was 36.7 per cent.

Canadians’ perceptions were also off on what proportion of Canada’s population is visible minority and immigrant. Respondents guessed high on both counts, which might explain, in part, why misperceptions about criminals are as great as they are.

Canadian governments and police forces generally do not distribute race and crime statistics, partly out of a fear it will stigmatize communities and fuel racism. But the lack of information may be another reason why Canadians thought people with criminal records were disproportionately non-white.

“The interesting thing about the findings,” says University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley, “is that under a situation where (race and crime information is not distributed) people still have the perception that minorities are more involved in crime, and in fact this perception is far worse than the reality. In many ways, (the) data show that this ban on these statistics has not protected minorities at all. In fact, it may have made it worse.”