Crime in Canada

Crime rates in Canada were reported at 5,334 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants with violent crime at 1,098 incidents and property crime at 3,245 incidents (per 100,000).[5] The province or territory with the lowest crime rate in 2017 was Quebec with 3,359 incidents per 100,000 followed by Ontario with 3,804 incidents per 100,000. The province or territory with the highest crime rate for 2017 was Nunavut with 34,948 incidents per 100,000. Overall crime decreased 23% between 2007 and 2017 with all provinces experiencing a decrease in crime (up to 34%) with the exception of Yukon which saw no decrease and Nunavut which saw an increase. Violent crime was lowest in Prince Edward Island followed by Ontario and Quebec. [5] The three northern territories have higher per capita crime rates than any province.

Canada Homicide Rate year-by-year

Canada's homicide rate per capita (per 100,000) inhabitants has been declining since a peak in the 1970s. After dropping to a low point of 1.44 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013, Canada's homicide rate has been rising again.[6] In 2015 the rate rose to 1.68 per 100,000 people, up from 1.47 the previous year.[7] According to Statistics Canada data from 2016, police reported 611 homicides across Canada in 2016, a rate of 1.68 per 100,000 people.[8] Canada's national homicide rate 2017 was the highest it's been in a decade, Statistics Canada says, because of a spike in gang-related violence and shootings. The agency said there were 660 reported homicides in Canada last year. Not only was that an increase of nearly eight per cent from 2016, it also pushed up the homicide rate to 1.8 victims for every 100,000 people, the highest since 2009.[9] The agency also said the rates of other serious offences, including attempted murder, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault were all up last year, as was the use of guns in violent crimes.[9]

Police reported criminal violence is thought to be an undercount of actual violence rates. Thus, approximately every five years, Statistics Canada conducts a survey of victimization in Canada. The last General Social Survey conducted was in 2004, where 24,000 people were contacted by telephone: 106 reported incidents of violence per 1,000 polled, which is slightly lower than in 1999 when it was 111 per 1,000 polled.[10] In 2007, the number of murders dropped to 594, 12 fewer than the previous year. One-third of the 2007 murders were stabbings and another third were by firearm. In 2007, there were 190 stabbings and 188 shootings. Handguns were used in two-thirds of all firearm murders. Seventy-four youths were accused of murder, down 11 from the previous year. About eighty-four percent of murders were done by someone known to the victim. Male victims of homicide were most likely to be killed by an acquaintance, someone known to them through a criminal relationship, or a stranger. Female victims of homicide were most frequently killed by a current or former intimate partner, or another family member. The province with the highest crime rate was Manitoba while the lowest crime rates occurred in Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Police reported that the number of hate crimes in Canada dropped to 1,798 in 2018 compared to 2,073 in 2017 as per the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. However, the number is still higher than the previous years when there were 1,409 in 2016, 1,362 in 2015 and 1,295 in 2014. Religion continues to be the leading motivation and cause for the hate crimes (37%) in Canada according to the survey conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS).[11]

Map of Police per 100,000 population across Canada, 2012.[21]

  < 176

  176-200

  201-300

  301-400

  > 400

In 2005, there were 61,050 police officers in Canada which equates to one police officer per 528.6 persons, but with significant regional variations.[22] Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island have the fewest police per capita with 664.9 and 648.4 persons per police officer, respectively. Conversely, the highest ratio of police to population is found in Canada's northern territories; Nunavut has 247.9 persons per police officer, the Northwest Territories has 248.5 persons per officer and the Yukon has 258.2 persons for each police officer.[23]

That is a substantially lower rate than most developed countries with only Japan and Sweden having so few police officers. The United States has one officer per 411.5 persons, and Germany 344.8.

Canada's national police force is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which is the main police force in Canada's north, and in rural areas except in Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland. Those three provinces have their own provincial police forces, although the RCMP still operate throughout rural Newfoundland and also provide specific federal policing services in Ontario and Quebec. Many cities and districts have their own municipal police forces, while others have contracts with the provincial police or RCMP to police their communities.

Canada abolished the death penalty for murder in 1976,[26] instituting a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for murder.

In 2001, Canada had about 32,000 people in prison or about 0.13% of the total population. Globally, the United States was the country with the highest percentage of inmate population (about 0.7% of the total population). The European average is 0.2% of the total population, with France and Germany having lower rates than Canada, but with the United Kingdom, Spain and most of Eastern Europe having higher ones.

Comparing crime rates between countries is difficult due to the differences in jurisprudence, reporting and crime classifications. National crime statistics are in reality statistics of only selected crime types. Data are collected through various surveying methods that have previously ranged between 15% and 100% coverage of the data. A 2001 Statistics Canada study concluded that comparisons with the U.S. on homicide rates were the most reliable. Comparison of rates for six lesser incident crimes was considered possible but subject to more difficulty of interpretation. For example, types of assaults receive different classifications and laws in Canada and the U.S., making comparisons more difficult than homicides. At the time, the U.S. crime of aggravated assault could be compared to the sum of three Canadian crimes (aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and attempted murder). This comparison had a predicted bias that would inflate the Canadian numbers by only 0.1%. The study also concluded that directly comparing the two countries' reported total crime rate (i.e. total selected crimes) was "inappropriate" since the totals include the problem data sets as well as the usable sets.[27] For reasons like these, homicides have been favored in international studies looking for predictors of crime rates (predictors like economic inequality).

• Crime Stoppers
• Block Parent Program
• Gangs in Canada
• Political scandals in Canada
• Computer crime in Canada
• Terrorism in Canada
• Department of Justice (Canada)

• Homicide in Canada, 2018

• Correctional Service Canada (commonly called Corrections Canada) administers federal prisons and parole boards.
• Crime comparisons between Canada and the United States
• Black markets in Canada