Government of New Brunswick

Crime Severity Index (CSI):  The CSI measures changes in the level of severity of crime in Canada from year to year. In the index, all crimes are assigned a weight based on their seriousness. The level of seriousness is based on actual sentences handed down by the courts in all provinces and territories. More serious crimes are assigned higher weights, less serious offences lower weights. As a result, more serious offences have a greater impact on changes in the index.

Violent Crime Severity Index (VCSI) :  The violent crime severity index includes all Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) violent violations, some of which were not previously included in the aggregate violent crime category, including uttering threats, criminal harassment and forcible confinement.

Non-Violent Crime Severity Index (NVCSI): The non-violent crime severity index includes all non-violent Criminal Code violations including traffic, as well as drug violations and all Federal Statutes.

Clearance rate:  One of the primary functions of the police is investigating and solving crimes. A way of measuring how effective the police are in performing this function is by using the clearance rates. These rates show the number of incidents the police cleared by a charge or otherwise (i.e., solved) during the year as a proportion of the number of incidents during the year.

Incident (or Offence): A criminal incident involves one or more related offences that are committed during a single criminal event and have been reported to police. Where there are multiple victims within a single criminal event, a separate aggregate incident is counted for each victim. For example, a single incident involving an assault on three victims at the same time and location is counted in the aggregate statistics as three incidents of assault. Police services can report up to four violations for each incident, however the CSI is based on the most serious violation in the criminal incident.

Violent offences: Involve the use or threat of violence, including homicide, attempted murder, assault, sexual assault, and robbery.

Non-violent offences: Include property offences and other Criminal Code offences, as well as Criminal Code traffic offences, drug-related offences and violations of other federal statutes.

Assault: Includes the Criminal Code category assault (level 1) which includes pushing, slapping, punching and face-to-face verbal threats. It also includes level 2–assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm which involves carrying, using or threatening to use a weapon against a person or causing someone bodily harm. And it includes level 3–aggravated assault which involves wounding, maiming, disfiguring or endangering the life of a person.

Property offences: Involve unlawful acts to gain property, but do not involve the use or threat of violence against the person. They include offences such as break and enter, theft and mischief.

“Other” Criminal Code offences: Include crimes such as disturbing the peace and offences against the administration of justice (e.g., failure to comply with an order, failure to appear and breach of probation).

Drug-related offences: Include offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act such as possession, trafficking, production, importation and exportation of drugs or narcotics.

Other federal statute violations: Include violations of federal statutes other than the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. These include violations of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.