Crime Rate & Total Crime 1962-2009

This is just a quick update on crime in Canada. Some people are under the impression that although crime rate is decreasing, overall crime is increasing due to population growth. Like Crime Rate, this has not been the case since the peak year 1991. I will try to provide a more refined view when I get a chance but here is a preliminary graph to illustrate the trend. To find the data source I am working from, check out my other articles with the label 'crime'.

Provincial Crime Statistics for 2009

How does the crime rate in your province compare with others and with the national average. Here are the latest (2009) crime rates by province. Those in green are less than the national average, while those in yellow are above the national average. The red entry is the highest. I dealt with overall crime rate trends in an earlier article on September 18th, and drilled down by city on October 1st.

It is clear that the lowest crime rate is in Ontario, and highest is in Saskatchewan. Quebec & New Brunswick are fairly low, the Atlantic provinces are about average and the western provinces are higher than average. I have not included the territories here, in general they have even higher crime rates than the provinces.

Click on the table to see it in original size.

Crime Severity Index in Canada by City

Statistics Canada recently released the Crime Severity Index for the larger 208 police servicing communities representing 77.8% of the population of Canada. Here is that list in a table that can be sorted by the various fields. Simply click on the column heading you want to sort by. The CSI columns are their ranking in the list, if you want the actual CSI value refer to the original Statistics Canada article above.

I also have the data in a Google Spreadsheet format if you want to investigate further.

Crime Rate in Canada - 1962-2009

On Thursday I wrote about Canada's decreasing crime rate, although I only had data going back to 1999 to demonstrate this trend. I have since located a 1998 copy of the Juristat Crime Statistics in Canada that has additional data going back to 1962 on page 15. I have graphed them below.

You will notice a break in the detailed crime data between the years 1998 & 1999. As I am retrieving this data from two different sources, it is clear that several items that used to be classified as 'other crime' have been reclassified into 'violent' or 'property' crime. I could make some guesses based on what is not specifically mentioned in the old report (see page 16) compared to Table 2 in the new data; the only one I can confirm, because it is listed in both reports, is that 'arson' has been reclassified as a property crime. I have left the total crime as a contiguous curve as that would be the same in both reports.

It is clear from this data that the crime rate in Canada peaked around 1991, and has been declining since. I am still unable to locate Stockwell Day's August 3^rd unreported crime statistics to report on.

Canada's decreasing crime rate

It is clear that both violent crime and property crime have been decreasing for the past decade or more. There was a slight increase in other crimes until 2004 but that has since been decreasing as well. Unfortunately I can't find Stockwell Day's unreported crime statistics to add to my table, perhaps he could crayon it in for us.

Violent crime is homicide, assault, sexual assault, abduction, kidnapping, extortion, harassment, threats, unlawful pointing or discharge of a firearm, robbery, etc. Property crimes are break & enter, theft, possession of stolen property, fraud, mischief, arson, etc. Other crimes include counterfeiting, weapons violations, child pornography, prostitution, disturbing the peace, administration of justice violations, etc. You can find the details for the past two years in the Police-reported crime for selected offences.