Analyse des tendances et configurations de la criminalité au Québec à l’aide d’un indice de gravité de la criminalité
The traditional measure of the criminality (rate for 100 000 inhabitants) raises problem in the analysis of the variations of the criminality in time or space. The problem is due to the fact that the rate of criminality is essentially determined by less serious and very frequent crimes. The present study allowed testing the utility of a new tool developed by Statistics Canada which gets an index of "severity of criminality" in which every crime is weighted by its score of severity (based on the sentencielles decisions average in Canada from 2002 till 2007 for every kind of crime. Applied to the official statistics of Quebec from 1977 till 2008, our analyses show that the indication of gravity turns out to be a useful measure to draw up a more realistic portrait of the trends of violent crimes from one year to the next. More precisely, the crime seriousness index shows that the rate of violent crimes remained stable from 1977 till 1992, on contradiction to what is shown by traditional rate which rather demonstrates a huge rise during this period. Crime seriousness index can also be used towards violent crimes, in order to compare more adequately territories, to establish those who show more serious crimes. However, among global criminality and crimes without violence, the indication of gravity is of no utility and presents the same reading of the criminality as traditional measures. It explains that it is always the same crimes (thefts, mischief and breaking and entering) that contribute mainly to each of both measures of the criminality.
crime analysis trends of criminality crime seriousness weighted crime severity index