Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2011

• Published in: Juristat p. 1
• Main Author: Sinha, Maire
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa Statistics Canada 25.06.2013
• Subjects: Criminal statistics; Domestic violence; Families & family life; Statistical data; Canada
• ISSN: 0715-271X; 1209-6393

Since 1961, Statistics Canada has collected police-reported data on murder-suicide incidents, victims and accused persons through the Homicide Survey.2 This section will present an overview of family-related murder-suicides in Canada for the period from 2001 to 2011. For the purpose of this report, murder-suicides are defined as any homicide incident that has been cleared by police as a result of the suicide of the accused.3 Using data from the Homicide Survey, the prevalence and trends in family- related murder-suicides will be examined. In addition, this section will look at the more common types of family-related murdersuicides including murder-suicides in spousal relationships, murder-suicides of children and murder-suicides of seniors aged 65 and older.4 As with victims of dating violence in general, victims of dating murder-suicides tended to be older than victims of violence in general. For example, while rates of violence generally tend to peak among those aged 15 to 24, rates of dating murder-suicide were highest among victims aged 35 to 44 (0.6 per 1,000,000). As with other forms of violence, rates of dating murder-suicide were lowest among victims aged 55 and older (0.1 per 1,000,000 population). The most recent stability in rates of intimate partner homicides over the last three years was not evident for both sexes, and in fact, resulted from an increase in rates of intimate partner homicides against women and a concurrent decrease in rates against men. In 2011, the rate of intimate partner homicides against women grew by 19% from a rate of 4.4 victims per million women in 2010 to 5.2 victims per million women in 2011. Increases were seen in both spousal homicides (+21%) and dating homicides (+12%) (Table 3.7, Table 3.8). In contrast, the male rate of intimate partner homicides fell in 2011 to the lowest rate recorded in the previous twenty-year period. Both homicides against male spouses and dating partners decreased.