Pilot Survey on Police-Reported Hate Crimes

Detailed information for 2001-2002

The goals of this survey were to enhance our understanding of hate crime in Canada and to assess the feasibility of collecting national police-reported hate crime statistics.

Data release - June 1, 2004

• Description
• Data sources and methodology

Description

In January 1999, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) received a commitment of four years funding from the federal government's Policy Research Initiative (PRI) to conduct a study on hate crime in Canada. The purpose of the overall study is to enhance our understanding of hate crime and to assess the feasibility of collecting police-reported hate crime statistics in Canada. In 2001, the CCJS released a report entitled "Hate crime in Canada: an overview of issues and data sources", catalogue no. 85-551-XIE.

This report helped to address some questions regarding the nature and magnitude of hate crimes in Canada, although certain data gaps were identified. As a result, it was determined that a pilot survey should be conducted with police departments that collect hate crime statistics.

This pilot survey on hate crime in Canada was conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics through funding from the government's Policy Research Initiative. The goals of this survey were to enhance our understanding of hate crime in Canada and to assess the feasibility of collecting national police-reported hate crime statistics.

Reference period: Calendar years 2001 and 2002

Subjects

• Crime and justice
• Crimes and offences
• Victims and victimization

Data sources and methodology

Target population

The target population for this survey is police departments that collect hate crime statistics. The participating police services were Calgary, Edmonton, Halton Regional, Montréal, Ottawa, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (excluding detachments from British Columbia), Regina, Sudbury, Toronto, Waterloo, Windsor, and Winnipeg. Combined, these services represent about 43% of the national volume of crimes measured by the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (record number 3302).

Instrument design

Consultations were held between September 2001 and March 2002 with a number of academics; members of various non-governmental and community organizations; and federal and provincial departments responsible for the administration of justice, as well as police departments.

Sampling

This survey is a census with a cross-sectional design.

Data are collected for all units of the target population, therefore, no sampling is done.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

No public use microdata file will be produced by Statistics Canada and data will not be made available through the Data Liberation Initiative (DLI).

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

This methodology does not apply to this survey.