Human Trafficking Data

February 10, 2021

Question

The Daily announced today that Preliminary national estimates on police-reported human trafficking incidents, 2020 was released. And that is all it said. There was no indication of how to access the data; are they tables, in RTRA, RDC? Or that it is part of the UCR.

I looked up the UCR tables and can’t find any 2020 data related to human trafficking. So what has been released?

Answer

What The Daily released yesterday was a data availability announcement only. This means that there is no analytical report or any associated CODR tables.

 

The data is however available upon request to the CCJCSS.

*UPDATE | FEBRUARY 11, 2021* The table is attached here. It’s not much at all, however subject matter needs to announce every release (no matter how small!) in the Daily.

Inmate Ethnicity Data

Question

I have a researcher seeking historical (and current data) on federal prisons, with particular attention on inmate profiles, precisely...inmate ethnicity.

Annual reports of the OCI, and Commissioner of Penitentiaries (and its previous incarnations) have provided clues that this data is out there.

Answer

The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) does not collect data by ethnicity, with the sole exception that some of our surveys have an Aboriginal identity indicator. For the purposes of corrections data, this is available in the following tables;

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2510012&tabMode=dataTable&srchLan=-1&p1=-1&p2=9

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2510022&tabMode=dataTable&srchLan=-1&p1=-1&p2=9

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=2510026&tabMode=dataTable&srchLan=-1&p1=-1&p2=9

The annual Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview from Public Safety Canada provides a national level snapshot. See Figure C9 in the 2015 annual report (p. 49), with the following self-reported race groupings for offenders: 

• ​Aboriginal,
• Asian, 
• Black, 
• Caucasian, 
• Hispanic, 
• Other/Unknown​

Some provincial government departments may also release similar statistics. For example, the Province of BC produces a series of Justice Dashboards, two of which cover corrections: Adult Custody and Community Corrections. These dashboards include data on ethnicity in the following categories: 

• ​Aboriginal (broken down further into Aboriginal, Native, and Metis), 
• Asian, 
• Black, 
• Caucasian, 
• East Indian, 
• Hispanic, 
• Other, and 
• Unknown 

The data that feeds into these two dashboards is also available through the DataBC website. I don't know if similar sources are available in other provinces.

There has been quite a lot written about the difficulty in accessing data on ethnicity in the Canadian criminal justice system. Some notable works include:

1. Collecting Data on Aboriginal People in the Criminal Justice System: Methods and Challenges

Type	Report
Author	Rebecca Kong
Author	Karen Beattie
URL	http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=85-564-XIE&lang=eng
Place	Ottawa, ON
Pages	34
Date	May 2005
Extra	ISBN: 0-662-40132-8
Institution	Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics
Abstract	This objective of this report is to present the status of national data on Aboriginal people who come into contact with the criminal justice system as offenders and victims. The report examines the current and potential collection of an individual's Aboriginal identity through various justice-related surveys at Statistics Canada, the challenges within these surveys to collect these data and provides some insight into the quality of these data. The data and sources are examined within the context of information needs for the justice and social policy sectors, and in relation to the preferred method of measuring Aboriginal Identity at Statistics Canada. Data sources examined include the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, the Homicide Survey, the Integrated Criminal Courts Survey, the Adult Corrections Survey, the Youth Custody and Community Services Survey, the Youth Alternative Measures Survey, the Transition Home Survey, the Victim Services Survey and the General Social Survey on Victimization. Finally, the report briefly describes efforts by other countries to improve justice-related information on their indigenous populations.
Report Number	85-564-XIE

2. Race-based criminal justice data in Canada: Suggestions for moving forward 

Type	Report
Author	Akwasi Owusu-Bempah
Pages	29
Date	March 2011
Institution	Public Safety Canada
Note:	Copy obtained under Access to Information request (IA-2013-00078) for previously-released documents held by Statistics Canada (CCJS)​. Originally listed onDecember 2012 Completed ATI Requests list (file # A-2012-00097).  Please contact me if you want a copy. I haven't attached it here because the 29-page report is a huge 86 MB PDF because ATI documents are released as images.

Excerpt from page 2: 

"Information on individual alleged offenders and victims processed by the criminal justice system, including descriptions of Aboriginal status and racial background, is routinely collected from the records of  criminal justice agencies. However, because this information is collected to meet the disparate operational needs of the agencies involved, the data often lacks the consistency necessary for comparative purposes.

Police services, for example, have the ability to collect Aboriginal and racial data, and many are, in fact, currently recording such data for intelligence purposes and/or when it is relevant to a criminal investigation. The internal data management systems utilized by police services collect detailed information on the racial background of accused persons and the victims involved in crime incidents. While some police forces report Aboriginal information to the CCJS, the majority of forces refuse to do so. The Integrated Criminal Court Survey and the Integrated Correctional Survey are also valuable sources of information on individuals processed through the criminal justice system. Racial information is not systematically collected as part of the Integrated Criminal Court Survey, however, this may be included in th survey where deemed important by stakeholders. The Integrated Correctional Survey currently collects self-reported racial information of individuals entering the correctional system. Furthermore, the potential exists to link police-reported and court data to corrections records, which would allow for a more extensive examination of criminal justice and social policy issues.

The vast majority of data on the racial background of individuals processed through the Canadian criminal justice system is used for internal purposes and is not made publicly available in any systematic way. The  most readily available criminal justice data that includes information on race is the Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview, produced by Public Safety Canada; this document includes a "one day snapshot" of the race of all offenders under federal supervision."

​​3. Whitewashing Criminal Justice in Canada: Preventing Research through Data Suppression

Type	Journal Article
Author	Paul Millar
Author	Akwasi Owusu-Bempah
URL	http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0829320100000375
Volume	26
Issue	03
Pages	653–661
Publication	Canadian Journal of Law & Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société
ISSN	1911-0227
Date	December 2011
DOI	10.3138/cjls.26.3.653
Accessed	2016-04-27, 8:46:50 PM
Abstract	Race and racism have long played an important role in Canadian law and continue to do so. However, conducting research on race and criminal justice in Canada is difficult given the lack of readily available data that include information about race. We show that data on the race of victims and accused persons are being suppressed by police organizations in Canada and argue that suppression of race prevents quantitative anti-racism research while not preventing the use of these data by the police for racial profiling. We also argue that when powerful institutions, such as the police, have knowledge that they keep secret or refuse to discover, it serves the interests of those institutions at the expense of the public. Fears that reporting of racial data will result in racial profiling or the stigmatization of racialized communities are not assuaged by the repression of this information. Stigmatization may still occur, and racial profiling can continue to happen, but without public knowledge. Quantitative anti-racist research requires consistent, institutionalized reporting of race data through all aspects of Canadian justice. We outline what data are available, what data are needed, and where consistency is lacking. It is argued that institutional preferences for white-washed data, with race and ethnicity removed, should be subrogated to transparency.

Homicides With Illegal Versus Legal Guns

Question

I have a student looking for ‘the number of homicides caused by illegal vs. legal guns in Canada up to 2005.’  I don’t see a product that includes this for registered or unregistered guns. Am I missing anything?

Answer

Our contacts in the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics have sent me two spreadsheets with data from the Homicide Survey that should be of interest to your student (Classification of weapon where primary cause of death was shooting; Homicides committed with firearms, Canada, Provinces/Territories).

Citing Department of Justice Data

Question



I have a student trying to cite one of the Beyond 20/20 tables from the Department of Justice data that we get through the DLI (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/justice-eng.htm).  I can’t find anything in Gaëtan’s guide that addresses aggregate statistics that we get directly from the DLI.  Might be something to add…

I am wondering if something like the following would do it:

Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. 2007. All Police Services - (1977 - 2007), Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (table).  Statistics Canada (distributor). Beyond 20/20.

I (and the student) would appreciate feedback.


Answer

I will recommend that some examples are added to cover custom tables like these ones.  In the meantime, I will let you know my interpretation of the guidelines...

I noticed that every single author example uses either "Statistics Canada" or an individual's name.  None use names of individual divisions (such as the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics).  I also think it is important to note that you obtained it from the DLI web module. As for the date, the table title reflects it. So I came up with the following citation, based on the "Tables, graphs, figures or charts from the Statistics Canada website in HTML or PDF" format, and modified the end to reflect that it is actually a Beyond 20/20 table.

Statistics Canada. No date. Crime Statistics, All Police Services, 1977 - 2007 (table). Data Liberation Initiative.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/justice-eng.htm (accessed Xxxx xx, xxxx). Beyond 20/20.



Here are the examples I based it on:

Tables, graphs, figures or charts from the Statistics Canada website in HTML or PDF

Statistics Canada. No date. Gross Domestic Product, Income-based (table). Canadian Statistics. Last updated May 31, 2005.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pgdb/8101171-eng.htm (accessed June 13, 2008).

Statistics Canada. No date. Average Days Lost for Personal Reasons per Full-Time Employee per Year by Age Group, Sex, Occupation, Canada, Provinces, Annual Average (table). Labour Force Historical Review 2003 (database). Using CREPUQ (distributor). Last updated January 28, 2005.
http://ivt.crepuq.qc.ca/tableauxStat_A.html (accessed June 13, 2008). Beyond 20/20.

I hope this helps.

Violence and Aboriginal Women

Question

I have a graduate student interested in studying Aboriginal women's experience of violence.  We found this report --

Addressing violence against Aboriginal Women, the Elderly and Children from July 2008, which makes some claims about incidence of violence against Aboriginal women, which it footnotes to:

Measuring Violence Against Women: Statistical Trends.

This contains the reference:
"For the first time, residents of the three territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) were interviewed for the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS) as part of a pilot test and results show that women who live in the territories also experience higher levels of violence."

However, when I search variables in the 2004 GSS, there is no indicator with "aboriginal" as a category, nor is there any "territorial data" at all.

Is there some way of acquiring the survey data that has been collected?

Answer

An analyst in the author division explained that the aboriginal variable was suppressed on the public use microdata file in order to guard against disclosure.  The analyst went on to explain that the data is not even available in the RDCs:

"The data for the territories is not available in the RDCs.  Due to concerns about data quality (which are explained in the attached report), the microdata are not available to researchers outside of the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics who published the report.  We are trying again in the territories for the current GSS (2009) on Victimization, hoping that the improved methods we are using will yield better quality results that could be made available to researchers.  They will not be available until summer 2010 though."

Geographic codes in justice files

Question

I have a researcher who would like to link the crime statistics data in the B20/20 justice files to over 500 corresponding census subdivisions. I know that the data in the justice tables is at the detachment level; however, there is a geographic code attached to each detachment which looks census-like. Is there a relationship between the geographic codes in the justice tables and census geography below the provincial level? I suspect that the answer is no but if there is a correspondence, it would make merging the researcher's census data with the crime data a whole lot easier. Any assistance with this would be very much appreciated.

Answer

You were correct, the answer is no. I asked CCJS and the UCR survey managers and analysts have told us that the first two digits are the standard province code in which the detachment resides. The other three digits are sequentially assigned and do not reflect any geographical boundaries census or otherwise. Your researcher should therefore not link these codes to census subdivisions or any other geographic level below the province.

Correctional Services and Race

Question

A student is looking for statistics around race and prisoners/prison population. I know the Adult Correctional Services Survey does tell us how many aboriginal inmates there are, but I'm wondering if that's as far as we can get with respect to race/ethnicity of the Canadian prison population. Am I missing anything?

Answer

Looking at the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, the only information available on race/ethnicity for the prison population is an Aboriginal identifier.

They suggested that you contact the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) (http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/cont-eng.shtml) to see if they collect data on the race or ethnicity of individuals in their facilities. They are not sure however if they would collect data for provincial/territorial institutions.

You could have luck with CSC. I browsed the Publications section of the CSC website and one of their publications includes a figure that shows the % of the offender population (as of April 9, 2006) which is Caucasian, Hispanic, Aboriginal, Asian, Black and Other. The publication also includes a table that shows a more detailed description of the offender population as well as counts and % changes for 2001-2002 and 2005-2006. (Source: Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview 2006 -
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/res/cor/rep/_fl/FINAL%20English%20CCRSO%202006.pdf -- see pages 51 and 52. The notes below the figure and table define "offenders".)

Census Tract Crime Statistics

Question

I have a researcher looking for any available crime data for a census tract in Prince George (actually, he's looking for the data for a neighbourhood, but this Census Tract comes pretty close to covering it). I don't think we have access to anything at that geography, but I thought I'd better check to be sure. If not, are custom tabulations possible?

Answer

I checked with the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics and census tract level crime data isn't available. The lowest geographical area for which they can provide crime data is the police service level. They told me that Prince George has 2 respondents, an RCMP Municipal Force (59710 respondent code) and a RCMP Rural Detachment (59831 respondent code). Both of these forces send them crime data for their respective jurisdictions (areas of responsibility).

We have this data in the DLI collection the Crime Statistics "All Police services, 1977-2006" (ps_all.zip) file
(http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/justice.htm).
You can open the ps_all.zip file and search for Prince George or the respondent code.

Sexual Assault Data

Question

A student needs data for the last 10 yrs, for all cases of rape reported, the day and the time of the incidence.

I've looked at Crime Statistics in Canada (2006) and am wondering if I can get this information from the incident-based microdata version of the UCR survey.

Do we have access to this version of the UCR survey through DLI ?

Answer

We have Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) data on sexual assault offences for the last 10 years in the DLI collection but these data don't include information about the day or time of the assaults.

When I asked the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics about your request, they explained that there were changes to the Criminal Code of Canada in 1983 which removed rape and introduced a three tiered structure of sexual assault offences. So from 1983 onwards, the UCR provides data on sexual assault offences levels I, II and II. Our contact described the three levels as follows: "'Sexual Assault' offences, Level I (sexual assault - the most minor level), Level II (sexual assault with a weapon - serious injury to victim) and Level III (aggravated sexual assault - grievous injury to the victim)".

A table can be created by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics using UCR data that details the number of incidents and rate per 100 000 population of sexual assault offences (Level I, II and III) in Canada from 1996 to 2006.

The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics told me that they might be able to produce more detailed tables on sexual assault offences if you placed a custom request but this would be a fee based service as the tables don't exist as a standard product. The data in these tables would probably start in 1998, might specify if assaults occurred in the am or pm and wouldn't contain data from all police forces across Canada. But, as I mentioned above, these tables would only be available as a custom service for a fee.

Updated Products - Justice

Justice Beyond 20/20 Tables

Thank to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Division, we believe that the DLI Justice collection is now up to date as of August 2006.

Some of the data were updated and some of the tables were completely removed.

To help in the identification of terminated tables, replacement tables, etc. , the Justice "readme" and web page were updated as well.

We hope this will help in identifying the proper tables to help your users.

WEB: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Dli/Data/Ftp/justice.htm
FTP: dli/justice/b2020/data

Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Needed

Question

Is there any chance of more up-to-date tables from the CCJS, especially the Common offences, municipal police forces tables? The latest we seem to have are for 2000.

Answer

It appears that the table you are referring to is Municipal Police Forces, 1977-2000. This table is part of a terminated series of tables - we will not be receiving updated information.

Currently, the DLI collection is up-to-date based on the information received from the division.