Appendix C: Improvements to the reporting of crime statistics
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Police-reported crime statistics extracted from the UCR survey have been released in much the same format since 1962. The only changes have come from the introduction of new offences resulting from the passing of new legislation. Now, with virtually all police services responding through the UCR2 microdata survey, it is possible to introduce new detailed information into the standard tables released each year. There are three main improvements being made to the way in which police-reported crime statistics will be released in the future.
More detailed offences and improved crime categories
Not only does the UCR2 Survey collect more detailed offences, it is also able to improve upon the larger grouping of offences, know as offence categories. The historical violent crime offence category is revised to include a number of offences which were previously considered to be "Other Criminal Code" offences, but which have a clear component of targeting and impacting individual victims. These offences include:
- Criminal harassment
- Sexual offences against children
- Forcible confinement or kidnapping
- Extortion
- Uttering threats
- Threatening or harassing phone calls
Since the revised category includes a broader number of distinct offences, the total number of incidents for this category will be higher than what has been released historically in the "List of incident-based violent crimes versus aggregate violent crimes". Chart 1 shows a similar flat trend over the past 10 years for both measures. However, the revised violent crime rate experienced large increases in 1999 and 2000 which were not seen in the original series. These increases were the result of large increases in uttering threats and criminal harassment, both of which were included in the "Other Criminal Code" section of the original aggregate version of the UCR Survey.
Ability to count all offences in an incident, not just the most serious
It is not uncommon for a number of offences to occur at the same time and in the same place. This combination of offences occurring at the same time is defined as one "incident" in the UCR survey. According to UCR scoring rules, only the most serious offence in an incident, as determined by the maximum penalties allowed by the Criminal Code, should be counted.
An illustration of this type of situation could be that someone breaks into a home (break and enter), finds the homeowner inside and takes his wallet at gunpoint (a robbery), then pushes the victim to the floor and kicks him (an assault), before fleeing the scene. Three distinct offences have taken place, but the robbery (the most serious offence in this scenario) is the only offence that will be counted in overall crime counts. This rule helps ensure consistency and comparability in terms of how police services report incidents, both over time and among various services.
In the aggregate version of the UCR survey, the only offence in a particular incident which would be reported to the UCR survey would be the most serious. In the new UCR2 microdata survey, police services can send up to four different offences for each incident. While the robbery would still be counted as the most serious offence in the scenario above, and hence, the incident would continue to be classified as a robbery for the purposes of overall crime counts, the offences of assault and break and enter would now also be recorded as secondary offences.
Now that this additional information is being collected by the UCR 2 microdata survey, it is possible to show not just counts of offences when they occur as the most serious offence but also as secondary offences. Table 9 shows that certain offences occur relatively more frequently than others as secondary offences. For instance, for firearms and other weapons offences, there were almost an equal number reported as secondary violations as there were as most serious violations in an incident.
Ability to show both incident and victim counts for violent incidents
The UCR2 microdata survey also collects information on each victim in a violent incident. This allows for the reporting of violent incidents either by the number of incidents or the number of victims. The difference between the two counts can be seen in Table 10. In total, in Canada in 2007, there were 350,424 violent incidents involving 391,037 victims. Among the most common offences with multiple victims were assaults against police officers and attempted murder.
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