OTTAWA, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Canada's crime rate rose 2 percent in 2018 over the previous year for the fourth year in a row, a Canadian statistics agency said Monday.
There were over two million Criminal Code incidents reported by police in 2018, almost 69,800 more than in 2017, Statistics Canada said.
Statistics Canada said the 2018 figures only involved police-reported crime measured by the Crime Severity Index (CSI), while many crimes go unreported.
The change in the CSI in 2018 was the result of higher police-reported rates of numerous offences, including fraud which was up 13 percent; level 1 sexual assault, meaning without a weapon or evidence of bodily harm, up 15 percent; shoplifting of 5,000 Canadian dollars or under, up 14 percent; and theft over 5,000 Canadian dollars (about 3820 U.S. dollars), was up 15 percent.
These increases were partially offset by decreases for some other offences, including lower rates of breaking and entering, down 1 percent and robbery down 3 percent, it said.
Statistics Canada said both the rate and severity of crime were still substantially lower than they were a decade ago, both down 17 percent since 2008.
The crime rate in Canada peaked in 1991 and has been declining dramatically since then, dropping over 50 percent until 2014. Since 2014, the rate rose just over 8 percent.
Last year saw more than 28,700 police-reported sexual assaults, marking the fourth consecutive annual increase in the rate of sexual assault. But the vast majority of reported cases were classified as level 1.
While the crime rate was up slightly, the national homicide rate declined by 4 percent in 2018 after increasing in 2017. Despite the drop, the homicide rate still remains higher than the average over the previous decade.
The rate of homicide for Indigenous peoples in 2018 was five times higher than the rate for non-Indigenous people. Although Indigenous people make up only 5 percent of Canada's population, they were 22 percent of homicide victims.
After seeing a spike in 2017, the number of police-reported hate crimes in the country decreased 13 percent in 2018 from 2,073 incidents to 1,798, it said.
It also found that nationally, the number of hate crimes targeting the Muslim population fell 50 percent after spiking in 2017. In 2018, there were also fewer hate crimes targeting black communities, down 12 percent and fewer targeting sexual orientation, down 15 percent.
However, Statistics Canada said the rate of hate crimes continues to be higher than any other year since 2009.
