Open Data

Violent Crime Rates, Canada and Provinces

Description

This Alberta Official Statistic describes the violent crime rates for Canada and provinces for the years from 1998 to 2014. The rate is based on the incidence of violent crime per 100,000 population in each province. 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 (UCR3) 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

July 31, 2015

Tags
AOS Alberta Official Statistics Violent Crime Rate

Title and Dataset Information

Date Modified

2015-07-31

Update Frequency

Annual

Publisher / Creator Information

Publisher

Justice and Solicitor General

Subject Information

Start Date

1998-01-01

End Date

2014-12-31

Spatial Coverage

Canada, Provinces

Resource Dates

Date Created

2015-07-31

Date Added to catalogue

2015-05-13T19:26:09.954672

Date Issued

2013-05-28

Date Modified

2015-07-31

Audience information

Identifiers

Usage / Licence

Usage Considerations

For the period before 2009, Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (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 (URC) 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.

For more detailed information about the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey (e.g. target population, sampling design, data quality etc.), please visit Statistics Canada’s website here.

Contact

Contact Name

Office of Statistics and Information

Contact Email

osi.support@gov.ab.ca