2013 Canadian Homicide Data is Out, Hamilton Had 15 Murders in 2013

Statscan has released data on murder in Canada in 2013 and the various Canadian newspapers have jumped all over it. The Globe has a good article here.

I wasn't sure of the exact number of murders last year in Hamilton, but apparently it is 15 (I had thought it was 13). That is a murder rate of 2.04 per 100,000 inhabitants. Interestingly that works out to a population of approximately 735,000 which is significantly higher than Hamilton's population. So that probably is the census area and includes Burlington and Grimsby but I could be wrong. So it could well be that Hamilton itself has had 13 murders in 2013, which would work out to a murder rate of 2.5 per 100,000 if we use a Hamilton only population of 520,000. Which isn't so great.

However Hamilton this year is doing a lot better on the killing front, with only 7 murders so far in 2014 with less than a month to do. If Hamilton gets through the year with only 7 that would work out to a rate per 100,000 of only 1.35 (using a population of 520,000) which would be considerably better. For 2013 Hamilton had the fifth most murders per capita, but a rate of 1.35 would move us well down the list.

Here's the murders for each city followed by the rate per 100,000 for all the cities Statscan tracks:

Regina 9 3.85
Winnipeg 26 3.24
Thunder Bay 3 2.46
Edmonton 27 2.09
Hamilton 15 2.04
London 9 1.8
Calgary 24 1.75
Vancouver 42 1.72
Abbotsford-Mission 3 1.69
Saskatoon 5 1.67
Kelowana 3 1.62
Gatineau 5 1.55
KW Cambridge 8 1.5
St John’s 3 1.62
Halifax 6 1.47
Barrie 3 1.44
Saint John 2 1.37
St Catharines-Niagara 6 1.35
Toronto 79 1.34
Montreal 43 1.68
Oshawa 4 0.97
Ottawa 9 0.92
Brantford 1 0.7
Trois-Rivieres 1 0.65
Kingston 1 0.61
Greater Sudbury 1 0.61
Windsor 2 0.61
Quebec 3 0.38
Victoria 1 0.28
Moncton 0
Saguenay 0
Sherbrook 0
Perterborough 0
Guelph 0