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Crime Severity Index
Domain
Good governance
Subdomain
Safety and security
Indicator
Crime Severity Index
Definition
The Crime Severity Index tracks changes in the severity of police-reported crime by accounting for both the amount of crime reported by police in a given jurisdiction and the relative seriousness of the crimes.
Measurement
The Crime Severity Index measures changes in the level of severity of crime in Canada from year to year. It is complementary to the crime rate which measures only the volume of crime reported to the police per 100,000 population.
The Index includes all Criminal Code violations including traffic, as well as drug violations and all Federal Statutes.
In the Index, all crimes are assigned a weight based on their seriousness. The level of seriousness is based on actual sentences handed down by the courts in all provinces and territories. More serious crimes are assigned higher weights, and less serious offences lower weights. As a result, more serious offences have a greater impact on changes in the Index. These weights are updated using data from the Integrated Criminal Courts Survey (ICCS) every 5 years.
The Index is standardized to "100" for Canada, using 2006 as a base year.
Please refer to the document Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey for more information.
Data sources
Data visualizations
- Police-reported crime in Canada, 2023 (Infographic, July 25, 2024)
- Selected Crime Indicators (Police-reported Information Hub, July 25, 2024)
- Police-reported Information Hub: Criminal Violations (Police-reported Information Hub, July 25, 2024)
- Geographic Crime Comparisons (Police-reported Information Hub, July 25, 2024)
- Homicide in Canada (Police-reported Information Hub, July 25, 2024)
- Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2022 (Statistics Canada – Infographics, March 13, 2024)
- Police-reported crime in Canada, 2022 (Statistics Canada – Infographics, July 27, 2023)
- Police-reported crime in rural and urban areas, 2021 (Statistics Canada – Infographics, February 20, 2023)
- Police-reported crime in Canada, 2020 (Statistics Canada – Infographics, July 27, 2021)
- Police-reported crime in Canada, 2019 (Statistics Canada – Infographics, October 29, 2020)
Data analysis
- Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2023 (The Daily, July 25, 2024)
- Firearms and violent crime in Canada, 2022 (Juristat, January 30, 2024)
- Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2022 (StatsCAN Plus, July 27, 2023)
- Matane, Quebec: The gateway to the Gaspé - Statistics Canada (StatsCAN Plus, April 3, 2023)
- Police-reported crime in rural and urban areas in the Canadian provinces, 2021 (Juristat, February 20, 2023)
- After five years of increases, police-reported crime in Canada was down in 2020, but incidents of hate crime increased sharply (The Daily, July 27, 2021)
Additional information
For more information on the concepts and use of the severity indexes, please watch the video Measuring crime in Canada: a detailed look at the Crime Severity Index.
Also, please refer to the document Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey.
More statistics on crime and justice in Canada are available at Crime and justice statistics
Frameworks
This indicator aligns with the following frameworks:
- Date modified: