More than half of British Columbia experienced a crime rate that was two to three times higher than the national average in 2013.

Moreover, the level of police-reported crime in Canada’s northern territories is higher than in the rest of the country. However, there is little information available on police-reported crime in the provincial north.

According to Statistics Canada, police-reported crime in both the territories as well as in the northern regions of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador is higher than in their southern counterparts.

Photo credit: Statistics Canada.

In the northern provinces, the crime rate was twice as high than in the south as a total of 10,425 incidents occurred per 100,000 of the population in 2013. In the territories, the crime rate was seven times that of southern provincial regions with 34,594 incidents compared with the meager 4,749 in the south.

Interestingly enough, despite the small population in Canada’s north, the crime rate nearly doubles. For example, about six per cent of Canadians live in the northern provincial regions, yet these areas accounted for 12 per cent of police-reported criminal incidents in 2013.

As reported by Statistics Canada, the most frequent violent offence reported by the police in the provincial north and territories was common assault, which represented 53 per cent of all violent crime in the territories and 47 per cent in the provincial north in 2013. This rate is compared to the 40 per cent of violent incidents in the south.

In addition, violators tended to be much younger in the north than in the south, as rates of youth accused of police-reported violent crime were four times higher in the territories and two times higher in the provincial north.