Unfounded criminal incidents in Canada, 2017

This Juristat article provides an overview of rates of unfounded criminal incidents for 2017, with a particular focus on sexual assaults given that several police services conducted reviews of their sexual assault cases in 2017. Following national media attention in 2017 regarding the use of 'unfounded' by police to classify sexual assaults, Statistics Canada and representatives of the policing community made recommendations to address data quality issues and standardization to reintroduce the publication of unfounded criminal incidents.