Crime rates in Canada

Severity Index of selected Canadian cities

City 2009 % change from 2008

Regina 143.7 -12

Saskatoon 132.1 -5

Winnipeg 127.2 +2

Edmonton 115.1 -7

Vancouver 109.6 -8

Halifax 97.2 +1

Saint John 96.4 -6

Victoria 92.2 -10

St. John's 90.6 +4

Montreal 89.6 -2

Calgary 78.4 -7

Windsor 71.1 -5

Ottawa 67.0 -2

Toronto 61.9 -4

Quebec City 61.0 -4

(Source: Statistics Canada, Police-reported crime statistics )

According to Stats Canada and reported by the CBC the crime rate, which is a measure of the volume of crime reported to police, fell three per cent last year and was 17 per cent lower than a decade ago.
The crime severity index (CSI), which measures the seriousness of incidents reported, declined four per cent last year and was down 22 per cent from 1999. Violent crimes, from harassing phone calls to homicide, accounted for about one in five crimes in 2009. The report said violent crime is declining but to a lesser extent than overall crime. There were about 165,000 youth age 12 to 17 accused of a criminal offence in 2009, a slight drop from 2008. Both the numbers and the seriousness of youth crimes have generally been declining since 2001. The drop in police-reported crime severity was consistent across the country, with only Manitoba and Nunavut reporting increases.

Police-reported crime was most serious in the territories and the western provinces, which has been the case for the past decade. Crime-severity values in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories were twice as high as in the provinces. ]
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/07/20/crime-statistics020.html#ixzz0uGEgxbKN