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Note:

The data from the court charge tracking system provides information about individual charges and not cases. Care should be used when interpreting charge-based information. In many cases, two or more charges are laid against a person. A conviction may be obtained on one charge while other charges are withdrawn. Charge based data does not therefore provide meaningful information about the outcomes of cases involving persons before the court.

Small court locations may experience large percentage fluctuations in statistical values from one time period to another as a result of activity related to small numbers of charges. Data for those locations should be reviewed carefully to properly understand activity trends.

Offence Group and Offence Type

For statistical purposes, criminal offences are divided into six broad classes: crimes against the person, crimes against property, administration of justice offences, other Criminal Code offences, Criminal Code traffic offences, and federal statute offences. These six offence groups are further broken down into 31 classes of offences referred to as "offence types" (second column in the Offence Type Statistics report).

The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (CCJS) developed this system of classifying offences according to offence groups and offence types for collecting and reporting statistics about criminal charges in Canada. The CCJS is part of Statistics Canada.

Using the standard CCJS classification for reporting offence type statistics in the Ontario Court of Justice means that the data can be compared and contrasted with Statistics Canada's national and provincial offence data.

Charges Received

"Charges received" means the total number of individual counts listed on informations that are filed with the Ontario Court of Justice. An information may contain multiple counts/charges that arose from the same fact situation or case. The charges received at a court location are adjusted to reflect transfers of cases in and out of that court location.

Charges Disposed

"Charges disposed" means the number of charges for which there was a final outcome (disposition) in the time period (e.g. charges were dismissed, withdrawn or stayed, or a finding of guilt or not guilty was made).

Average Days To Disposition

"Average days to disposition" means the average number of days from when the first court appearance was "booked" to the date of the final court appearance (disposition). The date the first appearance was booked is not necessarily the date of the first appearance. For example, if a person is arrested and released by the police with a promise to appear in court in two weeks, the time starts when the appearance was booked, not two weeks later when the first appearance occurs.

The number of days where a bench warrant was outstanding is included in the average days to disposition. If a person failed to appear for a court appearance and a bench warrant was issued, the time between the issuing of the warrant and the execution of the warrant (i.e. the person was found and is back before the court), is included in this average.

Average Appearances to Disposition

"Average appearances to disposition" means the number of all court event types (e.g. bail, set date, trials, etc.) from the first to last court appearance.

Federal Statute

Charges that are included under the offence group category "federal statute" are those charges that are prosecuted by federal prosecutors and not provincial Crown Attorneys. Approximately 11% of all charges received are federal statute charges.

Youth Criminal Justice Act

The Youth Criminal Justice Act contains a set of principles to be used in deciding on a fair and appropriate youth sentence. It also contains a relatively small number of offences. Youth Criminal Justice Act offences include charges laid under sections 136, 137, 138 and 139 (e.g. failure to comply with a court order and publication of offender identity).

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