Statistics Canada Article on Organized Crime

The Statistics Canada publication Juristat published an article yesterday on Measuring organized crime in Canada: Results of a pilot project:

"Organized crime has long been identified as a government priority and a public safety issue. As a result of high profile incidents in the 1990s and extensive consultations by the government, the Criminal Code of Canada was amended in 1997 to help identify criminal organizations and to protect justice system participants (...) The aim of this and subsequent legislation was to provide law enforcement and justice officials with tools to respond to organized crime, including a clear national definition of a criminal organization (...), broader powers through sentencing guidelines, and the ability to seize property obtained for the benefit of organized crime (... )"

"To address the issue of organized crime, data are needed to inform both resourcing and policy questions related to detection, prevention and officer and public safety. Recent reports have indicated that the complexity of organized crime creates additional resource demands on policing (...). Further, the nature of organized crime is to constantly evolve to adapt and exploit new opportunities—characteristics which, without data and data sharing among law enforcement and those responsible for public safety, make it even more challenging to fight (...). Despite the need for data to inform resourcing and policy, there are currently no standardized data to monitor the nature and extent of organized crime at the national, provincial/territorial or local levels."

"This Juristat article provides an overview of existing measures of organized crime in Canada and raises awareness regarding data availability and the efforts being made to collect national police-reported data through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR). The article draws from a pilot project launched to determine best practices in the collection of police-reported data on organized crime."