Table 10
Completed adult criminal court cases, by most serious decision, Canada, 2005/2006 to 2013/2014

Table 10
Completed adult criminal court cases, by most serious decision, Canada, 2005/2006 to 2013/2014
Table summary
This table displays the results of Completed adult criminal court cases. The information is grouped by Most serious decision (appearing as row headers), 2005/2006, 2006/2007, 2007/2008, 2008/2009, 2009/2010, 2010/2011, 2011/2012, 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, calculated using number of completed cases units of measure (appearing as column headers).
Most serious decisionNote 1 2005/2006 2006/2007 2007/2008 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013 2013/2014
number of completed cases
GuiltyNote 2  
Include offences against the administration of justice 101,748 104,274 109,953 113,960 114,826 113,599 113,400 112,914 106,380
Exclude offences against the administration of justice 147,393 143,235 145,534 149,988 151,604 147,726 138,203 136,238 121,948
Total 249,141 247,509 255,487 263,948 266,430 261,325 251,603 249,152 228,328
Stayed/withdrawnNote 3  
Include offences against the administration of justice 26,906 28,346 31,866 29,496 30,566 33,764 30,462 30,244 29,812
Exclude offences against the administration of justice 85,863 85,338 88,246 87,793 94,920 97,571 94,751 90,720 84,713
Total 112,769 113,684 120,112 117,289 125,486 131,335 125,213 120,964 114,525
AcquittedNote 4  
Include offences against the administration of justice 1,900 1,927 1,890 1,920 2,161 2,308 2,437 2,482 2,520
Exclude offences against the administration of justice 12,330 11,664 10,702 10,628 11,004 10,079 10,318 10,994 11,459
Total 14,230 13,591 12,592 12,548 13,165 12,387 12,755 13,476 13,979
OtherNote 5  
Include offences against the administration of justice 1,873 1,754 1,615 1,614 1,647 1,630 1,468 1,167 1,064
Exclude offences against the administration of justice 4,309 3,999 3,387 3,298 3,323 3,280 3,077 2,855 2,744
Total 6,182 5,753 5,002 4,912 4,970 4,910 4,545 4,022 3,808
Total cases  
Include offences against the administration of justice 132,427 136,301 145,324 146,990 149,200 151,301 147,767 146,807 139,776
Exclude offences against the administration of justice 249,895 244,236 247,869 251,707 260,851 258,656 246,349 240,807 220,864
Total 382,322 380,537 393,193 398,697 410,051 409,957 394,116 387,614 360,640
Note 1.

A decision is a judgment made by the court. Decisions are ranked from most to least serious: guilty, stayed/withdrawn/other and acquitted. In cases where multiple charges are considered, the charge which results in the most serious decision according to this ranking is counted here. Other criteria are applied to break ties, that is, where more than one charge ended in conviction, or other types of decisions applied to more than one charge in a case.

Return to note 1 referrer

Note 2.

Guilty findings include guilty of the charged offence, of an included offence, of an attempt of the charged offence, or of an attempt of an included offence. This category also includes cases where an absolute or conditional discharge has been imposed.

Return to note 2 referrer

Note 3.

This category includes stays, withdrawals, dismissals and discharges at preliminary inquiry as well as court referrals to alternative or extrajudicial measures and restorative justice programs. These decisions all refer to the court stopping criminal proceedings against the accused.

Return to note 3 referrer

Note 4.

Acquittal means that the accused has been found not guilty of the charges presented before the court.

Return to note 4 referrer

Note 5.

Other decisions include final decisions of found not criminally responsible and waived out of province or territory. This category also includes any order where a conviction was not recorded, the court's acceptance of a special plea, cases which raise Charter arguments and cases where the accused was found unfit to stand trial.

Return to note 5 referrer

Note: As of 2005/2006, all provincial and territorial courts in 10 provinces and 3 territories reported to the Integrated Criminal Court Survey. Information from superior courts in Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan as well as municipal courts in Quebec were unavailable. The absence of data from superior courts in these five jurisdictions may have resulted in a slight underestimation of the severity of sentences since some of the most serious cases, which are likely to result in the most severe sanctions, are processed in superior courts. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the terms 'acquittal' and 'dismissed' are used interchangeably, resulting in an under-count of the number of acquittals in that province. The information from Quebec's provincial courts is reported using the Adult Criminal Court Survey National Data Requirements (NDR), rather than the ICCS NDR. The data are converted to the ICCS format, to the extent possible, during data processing activities. This reporting limitation results in a lack of data on conditional sentences.
Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Integrated Criminal Court Survey.
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