Building Knowledge

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice Canada.

February 2013

Building Knowledge Issue 2 – Child and Youth Victims of Criminal Harassment, 2011

Criminal harassment is captured under Section 264 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

As can be seen in the figure below, in 2011, the risk of becoming a victim of criminal harassment increased in adolescence. Among male youth, the number of victims of criminal harassment began to increase notably around age 12, while for female youth, the number of victims began to increase around age 11. Among male youth, the number of victims of criminal harassment remained relatively stable between the ages of 12 to 17. Among female youth, however, the number of victims of criminal harassment increased throughout their teen years. Indeed, the number of female victims of criminal harassment was much higher than male victims in the later teen years. The large difference between the number of male and female victims began to appear at approximately age 11.

These data indicate that a higher number of female youth experience criminal harassment in their teen years compared to males. While the number of male victims of criminal harassment remains stable throughout adolescence, the number of female victims increases as they become older.

Figure 1: Number of victims of police-reported criminal harassment by gender and age, 2011

Text equivalent of Figure 1 below

Figure 1 - Text equivalent

A vertical bar chart shows the number of victims of police-reported sexual assaults, male and female, for ages 0-17 years in the year 2011. The Y axis is measured in number of victims and increases in increments of 200, from 0 up to 1400. The X axis lists the age by year from 0 to 17.

The number of male victims is the first bar for each age, and the number of female victims is the second bar. At age 0, there were 14 male and 29 female victims; at age 1, there were 6 male victims and 13 female victims; age 2, there were 23 male victims and 71 female victims; age 3, there were 76 male victims and 190 female victims; age 4, 93 male victims and 269 female victims; age 5, there were 142 male victims and 272 female victims; age 6, there were 146 male victims and 244 female victims; age 7, there were 130 male victims and 277 female victims; age 8, there were 117 male victims and 274 female victims; age 9, there were 126 male victims and 305 female victims; age 10, there were 143 male victims and 344 female victims; age 11, there were 108 male victims and 412 female victims; age 12, there were 143 male victims and 610 female victims; age 13, there were 114 male victims and 945 female victims; age 14, 130 male victims and 1,077 female victims; age 15, there were 117 male victims and 1,297 female victims; age 16, there were 132 male victims and 1,082 female victims and at age 17, there were 176 male victims and 917 female victims.

Source: Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey 2011