Social Policy Trends: Domestic Violence and the Holidays

Occurrences of domestic violence spike on January 1st each year. The figure presents data showing the average number of occurrences of domestic violence in Calgary each day between December 22nd and January 10th, recorded from 2013 to 2017. Our focus is on occurrences of domestic violence that result in an intervention by police and satisfy a definition of criminal behavior used by Statistics Canada. These occurrences typically involve criminal offenses such as assault, criminal harassment, sexual offences, or homicide