Surveys and statistical programs - Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) (2024)

Status:

Active

Frequency:

Annual

Record number:

3302

The Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics (CCJCSS), in co-operation with the policing community, collects police-reported crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR). The UCR Survey was designed to measure the incidence of crime in Canadian society and its characteristics.

UCR data reflect reported crime that has come to the attention of police. Information collected by the survey includes the number of criminal incidents, the clearance status of those incidents and persons-charged information. The UCR Survey produces a continuous historical record of crime and Federal traffic statistics reported by every police agency in Canada since 1962. In 1988, a new version of the survey was created, UCR2, and is since referred to as the "incident-based" survey, in which microdata on characteristics of incidents, victims and accused are captured.

Data from the UCR Survey provide key information for crime analysis, resource planning and program development for the policing community. Municipal and provincial governments use the data to aid decisions about the distribution of police resources, definitions of provincial standards and for comparisons with other departments and provinces or territories.

To the federal government, the UCR survey provides information for policy and legislative development, evaluation of new legislative initiatives, and international comparisons.

To the public, the UCR survey offers information on the nature and extent of police-reported crime and crime trends in Canada. As well, media, academics and researchers use these data to examine specific issues about crime.

There are two versions of the UCR collection instrument that are operating simultaneously: UCR Aggregate (UCR1.0) Survey and the UCR2 Incident-based Survey, which is comprised of five versions, UCR2.0 to UCR2.4.

The UCR Aggregate Survey (UCR1.0) collects summary data for nearly 100 separate criminal offences and has been in place since 1962.

In order to collect more detailed information on each incident, victims and accused persons, the UCR2 Survey was developed in the mid-1980's. This alternative method of data collection in which a separate statistical record is created for each criminal incident is known as an "incident-based" reporting system. Incident-based data was received from select respondents for the first time in 1988.

A revised version of the UCR2 survey known as UCR2.1 was introduced in 1998. This version of the survey introduced certain efficiencies for police services and lowered response burden by eliminating or simplifying UCR2 variables. Then, in 2004, another version named UCR2.2 was introduced to take into account new variables (not processed separately in the past) such as organized crime, cybercrime, hate crime and geocode information. In 2017, UCR2.3 was introduced to collect name information of victims and persons accused. In 2021, the collection of information relating to firearms was initiated and enhanced hate crime and cybercrime variables were introduced, as part of the UCR 2.4.

Police Services are the respondents. The Canadian Forces Military Police became an active respondent to the UCR survey in 2022 and are required to provide the same information provided by other police services. They have provided incidents going back to January 2020. Canada Border Services Agency, as a law enforcement agency, is working towards becoming a new respondent to the UCR survey for the purpose of reporting information on drug seizures under the Customs Act and any other enforcement actions they are involved in relevant to the UCR. The response rate in terms of police respondents complying with the UCR Survey is virtually 100 percent. There are more than 1,000 separate police detachments responding to the survey, comprising of approximately 180 different police forces.

Data for the aggregate survey (UCR1) are sent to the CCJCSS on survey forms. Monthly counts of aggregate crime and Federal traffic incidents are recorded by police agencies and forwarded to the CCJCSS approximately 45 days after month end.

These forms are visually edited for completeness and consistency and, if necessary, follow-up communication with the respondent takes place for clarification and correction. The crime and Federal traffic data are transferred to an electronic format by the Data Return Facility. All counts are verified to ensure that the information has been correctly transferred from the paper forms to the electronic format.

Data for the Incident-based Survey (UCR2) are collected from police records management systems by an extraction program and are forwarded to the CCJCSS in a machine-readable format with a standard record layout. Data are generally submitted to the CCJCSS on a monthly basis.

UCR1 Aggregate Survey:

Data for the aggregate survey are processed through a set of automated edit routines to further verify the counts for internal consistency.

Error reports are produced and respondents are contacted to obtain correct information. Corrections are re-submitted for verification and updates. Master files of aggregate data are continually updated throughout the year and, in turn, are further processed when it is necessary to produce the year-end data.

Police services are expected to update submitted information if additional information becomes available (e.g., an accused has been charged for a previously reported incident). Assuming all procedures have been followed by the respondents, the UCR counts processed by the CCJCSS will correspond with the records maintained by police services at year-end.

UCR2 Incident-based Survey:

Prior to the data being extracted, record management systems now have a number of online edits that often mirror UCR internal edits. These edits assist the police service to maintain a high data quality standard for both themselves and the UCR survey.

Upon receipt of the data for the Incident-based Survey, initial data quality procedures are applied and the data are prepared for processing by the central processing system. This central processing system performs a series of intensive edits (more than 300) on these data, including duplicate record checks, logic and format error edits and imputations.

The system does not allow for errors on key variables; they will not pass the edits until they have been corrected. The outcome of the edits and imputations is documented in a series of edit reports and all processed data are stored in a database. Included in the edit reports are a summary of the number and types of records processed, a frequency count of edit failures and a listing of every record which failed an edit.

All errors are examined at the CCJCSS with the objective of identifying possible problems with the respondent system interface or with respondent adherence to survey data requirements. Any problems are followed up on directly with the respondent. Error reports are also sent to the respondents for their information and data correction.

The most significant loss of information occurs in the rare situation where a police service, because of technical or resource difficulties, is unable to submit a full year of data to the CCJCSS. If they had previously reported to UCR, historical imputation is done based on the same months from the most recent year for which data are available or, where applicable, five years of data are used to create a time series model for the missing data.

Imputation is used for the UCR2 Incident-based survey. The automated edits look for unexpected code values and will substitute a more meaningful code value given the information available within a variable and between variables.

Data are imputed for two reasons: one, a blank field was submitted when "not applicable" should have been selected; and two, due to an inter-field edit, deterministic imputation is performed (e.g., age will be imputed from the date of birth).

All police services are asked to review summary data tables for completeness and accuracy and, where necessary, adjustments are made before the final file is created. These tables contain information including a year-over-year comparison--using the current reporting year and the most recent prior year--which are examined to ensure that the percent changes reported by the CCJCSS are consistent with those identified by the police service. Upon completion of the verification process, and prior to final release, each police service is given the opportunity to sign a data acceptance form indicating that they have had the opportunity to review their data.

Comparing UCR Data with Courts and Corrections Data:

It is difficult to make comparisons between data reported by police and data from other sectors of the criminal justice system (i.e., courts and corrections). There is no single unit of count (i.e., incidents, offences, charges, cases or persons) which is defined consistently across the major sectors of the justice system. As well, charges actually laid can be different from the most serious offence by which incidents are categorized. In addition, the number and type of charges laid by police may change at the pre-court stage or during the court process. Time lags between the various stages of the justice process also make comparisons difficult.

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any data which would divulge information obtained under the Statistics Act that relates to any identifiable person, business or organization without the prior knowledge or the consent in writing of that person, business or organization. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

More specifically, CCJCSS does not release any tables or cross-tabulations that may identify a particular victim or suspect by the specifics of an offence.

Data collected through the UCR Survey represents a subset of all crimes occurring in Canada, but is an accurate measure of the number of incidents of crime being reported to the police. The quality and accuracy of data submitted through to the UCR Survey is checked through a series of programs which identify duplicates, missing or incorrect information. Issues identified through this process are shared with police services so that corrections can be made. The CCJCSS does not conduct audits of police department's records management units to ensure complete and accurate reporting. Nor does the CCJCSS examine records which the police have processed and determined to be outside the scope of the survey.

Adjustments to the UCR Survey, such as the addition of new offences or changes in the severity of those that exist are made in response to Federal Legislation changes. Adjustments may also be made in response to suggestions and commentary from both police services and data users which are intended to improve the quality and usability of data collected through the UCR survey. This can affect data comparisons over time.

The UCR Survey classifies incidents according to the most serious offence (MSO) occurring in the incident (generally the offence which carries the longest maximum sentence under the Criminal Code of Canada). In categorizing incidents, violent offences always take precedence over non-violent offences. For example, an incident involving both a breaking and entering offence and an assault is counted as an incident of assault.

As a result of the MSO scoring rule, less serious offences are under-counted by the aggregate survey. However, the incident-based survey allows up to four violations per incident, permitting the identification of lesser offences.

All provinces and territories are now surveyed almost entirely under the UCR2 program.

In 2023, about 150 police services in all 10 provinces and 3 territories supplied data to the UCR2 survey and represented approximately 100% of the population of Canada. The coverage provided by these services in the 2023 database is distributed as follows: 39% from Ontario, 22% from Québec, 13.8% from British Columbia, 11.8% from Alberta, 3.6% from Manitoba, 3.0% from Saskatchewan, 2.6% from Nova Scotia, 2.1% from New Brunswick, 1.3% from Newfoundland and Labrador, 0.4% from Prince Edward Island, and 0.1% from each of the 3 territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut). Please note that coverage is expressed as the proportion of the Canadian population covered by the UCR2 survey.

Continuity with the UCR1 aggregate survey data is maintained by a conversion of the incident-based data to aggregate counts at year-end.