University of Toronto. Data Library Service

Title: Uniform crime reporting survey (UCR 2.0)

Alternate title: Incident-based uniform crime reporting survey

Series title: Uniform crime reporting survey

Principal investigator(s): Statistics Canada. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS)

Producer: Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS)

Date of creation: 2010-08 [latest]

Funding agency:

Collector:

Distributor: Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada. Data Liberation Initiative.

Date of distribution: 2010-08 [latest]

Access conditions/restrictions: University of Toronto faculty, students and staff, for academic research and teaching purposes only. See DLI licence.

Summary: The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS), 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 been substantiated by 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 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.

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 three versions, UCR2.0, UCR2.1, and UCR2.2.

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. The first respondent reported incident-based data in 1988.

A revised version of the UCR2 survey known as UCR2.1 was introduced in 1998. This survey introduced certain efficiencies for police services and lowered response burden by eliminating or simplifying UCR2 variables. Then, in 2005, another version named UCR 2.2 was introduced to take into account new violations/variables (not processed separately in the past) such as organized crime, cyber crime, hate crime and geocode information.

Geographic coverage: Canada

Time period: 2006-2009

Date(s) of collection:

Universe:

Data type: aggregate statistics

Sample:

Mode of data collection: process-produced

Citation: Statistics Canada. Uniform crime reporting survey (2.1): location of incident by weapon present, selected police services, 2007 [computer file]. Ottawa, Ont.: Statistics Canada. Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) [producer]; Statistics Canada. Data Liberation Initiative [distributor], 2008

Extent of file: 11 data files ( Beyond 20/20 and Excel formats; number of logical records varies)

Related files: UCR 1.0, UCR 2.2
Other files from Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS)

Notes:

  1. (2008) Microdata collected from the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey will not be disseminated to the DLI as there are numerous caveats that would make it difficult for users to use and also to protect against confidentiality.
  2. Data will no longer be produced to identify secure and open custody.
  3. Re Toronto UCR2 data by census tracts: CCJS have similar data for a few other cities (Halifax, Winnipeg and Regina) using 2001 Census tracts. One of their staff will be creating tables for DLI using these data. As the tables are being produced with existing data files that were created through special funding, the author division will not be in a position to update them nor will they be able to provide data for other geographic areas than the ones covered in these tables. [dlilist 2009-10-14]
  4. For the period from 1998 to 2008 Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) data are not available for all respondents. In order to report this level of detail for police services still reporting to the Aggregate Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (URC) over this time, a process of imputation was applied to derive counts for violations that do not exist on their own in the aggregate survey. For approximately 80% of the aggregate offence codes, there is a 1:1 mapping with a new incident-based violation code. For violations where this was not the case, such as the aggregate other Criminal Code category, it was necessary to estimate (impute) this figure using the distribution of other Criminal Code offences from existing Incident-based UCR2 respondents.
  5. The crime severity index is calculated using Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) data. For the period from 1998 to 2008 Incident-based UCR2 data are not available for all respondents. In order to report this level of detail for police services still reporting to the Aggregate Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (URC) over this time, a process of imputation was applied to derive counts for violations that do not exist on their own in the aggregate survey. For approximately 80% of the aggregate offence codes, there is a 1:1 mapping with a new incident-based violation code. For violations where this was not the case, such as the aggregate other Criminal Code category, it was necessary to estimate (impute) this figure using the distribution of other Criminal Code offences from existing Incident-based UCR2 respondents.
  6. During the production of each year's crime statistics, data from the previous year are revised to reflect any updates or changes that have been received from the police services.
  7. The methodology for calculating census metropolitan area (CMA) populations was modified in 2003. Starting in 1996, the populations for CMAs have been adjusted to reflect the actual policing boundaries within the CMA and do not reflect the official Statistics Canada population for these CMAs. CMA data are included within province-level data.

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