Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey

Published by Statistics Canada, April 21, 2009

This report introduces the Crime Severity Index, a new tool for measuring police-reported crime in Canada that for the first time tracks changes in the severity of crime, not just volume.The report also examines how crime is measured in Canada, as well as recent improvements to statistics on crime that are gathered from the police.

The Crime Severity Index is the first major change to the reporting of police-reported crime statistics since the collection of these data began in the early 1960s. It is designed to measure change in the overall seriousness of crime from one year to the next, as well as relative differences in the seriousness of crime across the country.

The Index is an additional tool which can be used to further enhance our ability to understand the evolving nature of crime in Canada.