Montréal, December 11, 2025. – About 3 in 4 women (74%) and 4 in 5 men (83%) who experience acts of violence of a criminal nature or with high criminal potential from a current or former intimate partner in Québec do not report these acts to the police. This information comes from a new analysis entitled Le portrait de la violence entre partenaires intimes au Québec : la complémentarité entre les statistiques policières et les données d’enquête released today by the Institut de la statistique du Québec.
This analysis is based on the Québec Survey on Intimate Partner Violence, a population-based survey conducted for the first time in Québec in 2021–2022 among 13,590 women and 10,909 men aged 18 and over.
Police data do not show the full extent of intimate partner violence
According to police data, which are made available annually by the Ministère de la Sécurité publique, 25,401 crimes against the person committed in a conjugal context were reported by the police in Québec in 2022, or about 70 per day. These data cover criminal offences that have been identified, reported and recorded by the police under the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program.
According to the survey data, approximately 40% of Québec women aged 18 and over who have been in an intimate or romantic relationship have experienced at least one act of intimate partner violence in their lifetime, which represents about 1,329,500 women. This proportion is 26% for men, or about 858,400 men.
With regard to people who have experienced at least one act of violence of a criminal nature from a current or former intimate partner in their lifetime, the police were contacted for about 1 in 4 women (26%) and 1 in 5 men (17%), either by the victim or someone else. In addition, a police intervention took place for less than 1 in 10 people (9% of women and 5% of men) due to the criminal acts of violence experienced in the 12 months before the survey.
Reporting rates to police vary depending on the type of violence experienced and the age of the victim
The police are more likely to be contacted when the victim has experienced at least one act of physical or sexual violence than when the victim has exclusively experienced acts of psychological violence (e.g. harassment) or sexual or reproductive coercion, despite their criminal nature or high criminal potential (respectively 30% vs. 10% for women and 22% vs. 7% for men).
Results also show that the police are less likely to be contacted when the acts of violence are experienced by people aged 18 to 29 than by people who are older.
The data collected in the survey allow us to estimate the “dark figure” of crime for intimate partner violence in Québec. This concept refers to the gap between police data and the total number of criminal offences, whether they were reported to the police or not.
Read the complete analysis (PDF) (in French only)
The Institut de la statistique du Québec produces, analyzes and disseminates official, objective and quality statistical information on various aspects of Québec society. It is responsible for conducting all statistical surveys of general interest. The relevance of its work makes it a strategic ally for decision makers and an essential source of information for all those wishing to learn more about Québec.