Section 4: Conclusion
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Measuring the nature and extent of crime involves the use of multiple measurement tools. In Canada, and around the world, both victimization data and police-reported data are used to provide an idea of how much crime is occurring, and how much of that crime comes to the attention of the justice system. Both data sources have their strengths and limitations, but together they are able to give us a better understanding of crime trends and the impact of crime on our country and communities.
This report has introduced a third measurement tool, which will track changes not just in the volume of crime, but also in the seriousness of crime. The Crime Severity Index was developed by Statistics Canada in collaboration with its justice-related partners in an effort to address some fundamental limitations of the current police-reported crime rate.
The Index uses police-reported data to combine the concepts of how much crime is occurring in a given jurisdiction with how serious that crime is. Using court sentencing data, the Index creates a system of weights that are assigned to each offence; more serious offences receive higher weights, and less serious offences receive lower weights. This helps reduce the impact of high-volume less-serious offences, which tend to be subject to reporting differences both to and by the police.
As an analytical tool, the Crime Severity Index enables us to answer questions such as: is crime overall becoming relatively more or less serious; or, is crime in one jurisdiction more or less serious than in another jurisdiction? It was always possible to examine trends in individual offences, but until now it has been difficult to summarize those results into an overall picture.
Furthering our understanding of crime in Canada comes not only from adding to the measurement tools available to us, but also from improving what we already have. This report has also outlined changes that have been made to the way certain offences are counted in police-reported crime data, and to the way that police-reported crime is being disseminated by Statistics Canada.
These improvements, along with the addition of the Crime Severity Index to our existing measurement tools, give Canadians a more complete picture of the nature and extent of crime in their cities, provinces/territories and country.
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