Crime stats reporting to impact clearance status
Changes to how crime statistics are collected nationally are coming following last year’s Globe and Mail investigation into “Unfounded” sexual assaults.
Throughout 2017, the Globe and Mail has reported extensively on the issue of sex assault complaints in their “Unfounded” series, documenting the statistics from 178 police services across the country representing 92 per cent of the population.
The paper concluded one-in-five sexual assaults in Canada are cleared as unfounded. The report has been criticized by some for its methodology and interpretation of data, but many law enforcement agencies re-evaluated their files to see if mistakes were made.
As a result, the Police Information Statistics (POLIS) committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended police services no longer categorize incidents as “unsubstantiated.”
“Unsubstantiated is basically used when police would investigate a file, and they were not able to determine one way or another whether a criminal offence occurred,” said Jenn Birrell, a member of the Uniform Crime Reporting Team with the LPS Records Management Unit in a report to the Lethbridge Police Commission last week. “Based on their definitions previously, they weren’t able to call it a Criminal Code offence if you weren’t able to prove (it was an offence).”
“These changes will have a significant impact on the number of criminal incidents, clearance status of those incidents, and personscharged information reported by (LPS) in 2018 and future years,” Insp. Bill Anderson.
The Uniform Crime Reporting Survey measures the incidence of crime in Canadian society and its characteristics. Police-reported crime statistics for the survey are collected by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.
The UCR is a reflection of reported crime substantiated by police, and contains information such as the number of incidents, clearance status of incidents and charge information.
The data is used for crime analysis, resource planning, and program development. The survey creates a continuous historical record of crime and traffic statistics reported by police agencies in Canada since 1962.
Birrell noted police agencies around the world are moving toward a victim-centred approach, which errs on the side of belief unless there is concrete evidence to prove the incident did not occur.
As of 2018, the new definition of a “founded” complaint involves a police investigation where an offence occurred or was attempted, or if there is “no credible evidence to confirm that the reported incident did not take place” — including third party reports that fit the criteria.
The definition of “unfounded” has been narrowed. The new definition simply states that a complaint is “unfounded” if a police investigation reveals an offence did not occur or was not attempted — and drops the conclusion that no crime took place.
“This is going to change a lot of our statistics that will be reported,” Birrell said.
“You should be seeing every agency across Canada’s Criminal Code violations increasing while their clearance rates will be decreasing, because they’ll be unsolved.”
Reports to Statistics Canada are different than internal documentation, which are provided to the commission as part of annual reporting.
“Where this is going to blow up is in Maclean’s Magazine next year when they get strictly UCR recording,” said Chief Rob Davis. “So you’re going to see an increase in one, and a decrease in the other, which is going to suggest the police are doing a poor job of solving these.
“When you see that headline, understand these changes, and then look at our annual report.”
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