Table 6
Incidents of police-reported intimate partner violence in Canada, by sex of accused, clearance status, and same-/opposite-sex status, 2009 to 2017


Table 6
Incidents of police-reported intimate partner violence in Canada, by sex of accused, clearance status, and same-/opposite-sex status, 2009 to 2017
Table summary
This table displays the results of Incidents of police-reported intimate partner violence in Canada. The information is grouped by Clearance status (appearing as row headers), Same-sex, Opposite-sex, Females and Males, calculated using number and percent units of measure (appearing as column headers).
Clearance status Same-sex Opposite-sex
Females Males Females Males
number percent number percent number percent number percent
Cleared by charge 6,077 61 8,345 68 79,644 71 436,097 84
Cleared otherwise 3,898 39 4,003 32 32,091 29 81,329 16
Victim/complainant requests no further actionTable 6 Note 1 2,110 21 2,307 19 13,574 12 36,733 7
Reasons beyond the control of department 592 6 814 7 10,022 9 23,326 5
Departmental discretion 1,035 10 737 6 7,731 7 18,021 3
OtherTable 6 Note 2 161 2 145 1 764 1 3,249 1
Total 9,975 100 12,348 100 111,735 100 517,426 100
Note 1

Includes incidents where an accused person was known and sufficient evidence was obtained to support the laying of a charge, but the complainant refused to proceed with charges against the accused. As a result, police used discretion to not lay or recommend a charge.

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Note 2

'Cleared by other means' includes suicide of accused, death of accused, death of witness/complainant, diplomatic immunity, committal of accused to mental hospital, accused in foreign country, accused involved in other incidents, accused already sentenced, diversionary programs, incidents cleared by a lesser statute, incident cleared by other municipal/provincial/federal agency.

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Note: Intimate partner violence refers to police-reported incidents of violent Criminal Code offences committed among individuals in current or former legally married or common-law partnerships, boyfriend or girlfriend relationships, or other intimate relationships. Same-/opposite-sex status was derived from the relationship variable, and the sex of the victim and of the accused. Only incidents which involved one victim and one accused person are included. Excludes incidents where the sex or the age of the victim or the accused were unknown, or where the accused-victim relationship was unknown. Incidents involving victims and accused individuals aged 90 years and older are excluded from analyses due to possible instances of miscoding of unknown age within this age category. Incidents involving children under 15 years are excluded from the analysis. In order to support more detailed analysis on same-sex intimate partner violence, data have been pooled from 2009 to 2017.
Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (Trend Database).
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