The truth about Canadian crime rates

CRIME RATES have been declining in Canada for decades, as a result of demographics rather than policy initiatives. Here, as in other countries, most crimes are committed by young men, and because we have been producing fewer children of either gender there are not as many young men to commit them. According to Statistics Canada, the crime rate fell by 15 percent between 1998 and 2007, but that’s only part of the story. In 2009, StatsCan introduced an index that measures not only the change in volume of a particular crime, but also its relative seriousness in comparison with others (for example, homicide and rape are assigned higher weights than, say, shoplifting and creating mischief). The index shows that for the same decade, 1998 to 2007, the severity of crime in Canada fell by 21 percent.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2011.06-editors-note/