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Canada’s Crime Severity Index higher in 2023 with increased child exploitation
Global News
The rise in Canada's crime severity index in 2023 was mainly impacted by a 52% increase of police-reported instances of child sexual exploitation.
Statistics Canada recently released its figures for the Crime Severity Index (CSI) for 2023. Data show that the rate rose 2.1 per cent between 2022 and 2023, which translates to a rate of 80.5 per 100,000 people.
This is the highest the CSI has been since 2010, but well below when reported numbers peaked in the late 1990s.
Homicides were down in the majority of provinces, with Manitoba reporting a decrease of 15 from the year before. Both robberies and vehicle thefts both increased by five per cent, but when compared to longer-term data, they are down more than 50 per cent from 25 years ago.
The biggest contributors to the increase was a 35-per cent increase in rates of extortion, a 32-per cent increase in hate crimes, and a 52-per cent higher rate of police-reported instances of child sexual exploitation (CSE).
British Columbia accounted for 79 per cent of that increase, while Alberta made up 14 per cent. Manitoba’s number of cases came down slightly.
From 2014 to 2022, reported cases of CSE have increased by 217 per cent across Canada. That figure didn’t surprise Manitoba RCMP Cpl. Gord Olson with the Internet Child Exploitation Unit (ICE).
“We’ve been inundated over the last few years since COVID, really,” Olson explained. “From luring cases, to making and distributing child pornography cases… unfortunately I’m not surprised that the numbers are high nationally.”
In Manitoba there have been 609 instances of CSE between 2018 and 2022, with 411 perpetrators being identified within the same time period.