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.