Description
This Alberta Official Statistic describes the Crime Severity Index for Canada and Provinces, 1998 to 2014. Crime Severity Index is a measure of the seriousness of police-reported crime. It covers all Criminal Code violations including traffic, as well as drug violations and violations of all Federal Statutes. Each criminal offence is weighted based on sentences given. The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS), in co-operation with the policing community, collects police-reported crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. The UCR Survey was designed to measure the incidence of crime in Canadian society and its characteristics. UCR data reflect reported crime that has been substantiated by police. Information collected by the survey includes the number of criminal incidents, the clearance status of those incidents and persons-charged information. The UCR Survey produces a continuous historical record of crime and traffic statistics reported by every police agency in Canada since 1962. In 1988, a new version of the survey (UCR2) was created, which is referred to as the "incident-based" survey. It captures microdata on characteristics of incidents, victims and accused. Data from the UCR Survey provide key information for crime analysis, resource planning and program development for the policing community. Municipal and provincial governments use the data to aid decisions about the distribution of police resources, definitions of provincial standards and for comparisons with other departments and provinces. To the federal government, the UCR survey provides information for policy and legislative development, evaluation of new legislative initiatives, and international comparisons. To the public, the UCR survey offers information on the nature and extent of police-reported crime and crime trends in Canada. As well, media, academics and researchers use these data to examine specific issues about crime.
Updated
September 3, 2015
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CSV
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Alberta Official Statistic Visualization
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Title and Dataset Information
Date Modified
2015-09-03
Update Frequency
Annual
Publisher / Creator Information
Creator
Publisher
Justice and Solicitor General
Subject Information
Resource Dates
Date Created
2015-05-13
Date Added to catalogue
2015-05-13T19:25:57.202654
Date Issued
2013-05-28
Date Modified
2015-09-03
Audience information
Language
Identifiers
Usage / Licence
Usage Considerations
The crime severity index is calculated using Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) data. For the period from 1998 to 2008 Incident-based UCR2 data are not available for all respondents. In order to report this level of detail for police services still reporting to the Aggregate Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) over this time, a process of imputation was applied to derive counts for violations that do not exist on their own in the aggregate survey. For approximately 80% of the aggregate offence codes, there is a 1:1 mapping with the new incident-based violation code. For violations where this was not the case, such as the aggregate other Criminal Code category, it was necessary to estimate (impute) this figure using the distribution of other Criminal Code offences from existing Incident-based UCR2 respondents.
During the production of each year's crime statistics, data from the previous year are revised to reflect any updates or changes that have been received from the police services.
Police reported statistics may be affected by differences in the way police services deal with minor offences. In some instances, police or municipalities might chose to deal with some minor offences using municipal by-laws or provincial provisions rather than Criminal Code provisions. Counts are based on the most serious violation in the incident.
Contact
Contact Name
Office of Statistics and Information
Contact Email
Contact Other
(780) 427-2071