Quick fact: Crime Severity Index

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Each year, Statistics Canada reports on the number and type of criminal incidents coming to the attention of police.  Police-reported crime has traditionally been expressed as a rate per 100,000 population. A new tool has been developed for measuring police-reported crime in Canada – the Crime Severity Index.

The Crime Severity Index tracks changes in the severity of police-reported crime from year to year.  It tells us not only about how much crime is coming to the attention of police by also about the seriousness of that crime. The Crime Severity Index helps answer such questions as: is the crime coming to the attention of police more or less serious than before; and, is police-reported crime in a given city or province more or less serious than in Canada overall?

To learn more about the Crime Severity Index, please read Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. The most recent police-reported crime statistics are featured in Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2008 in this issue of Juristat.