MOOSE JAW — , but recent changes by Statistics Canada mean it’s no longer possible to determine how the community ranks compared to other municipalities.
On July 25, Statistics Canada’s Canadian Centre for Justice Studies (CCJS) released its report on crime statistics in 2023, which examined municipalities’ Crime Severity Index (CSI).
A crime rate is calculated using the number of police-reported offences per population size, while the CSI weighs the seriousness of each crime.
The data show that Moose Jaw’s CSI rating last year was 116.61, a decline from 120.98 or a 3.55-per-cent drop from 2022.
Furthermore, its violent CSI rating was 103.54, an increase from 101.94 or a 1.2-per-cent increase from 2022.
Also, the municipality’s non-violent CSI rating was 122.82, a decrease from 129.61 or a 5.05-per-cent decline from 2022.
A review of the online data tables for 2023 for overall CSI ratings shows that:
- North Battleford: 598.48, an increase of 6.58 percentage points from 2022
- Prince Albert: 333.97, an increase of 13.93 percentage points over 2022
- Yorkton: 181.11, an increase of 8.72 percentage points over 2022
- Saskatoon: 131.02, an increase of 1.17 percentage points from 2022
- Regina: 117.36, an increase of 2.23 percentage points over 2022
- Swift Current: 112.12, an increase of 20.24 percentage points from 2022
- Weyburn: 83.09, an increase of 6.2 percentage points over 2022
- Estevan: 115.48, an increase of 32.36 percentage points from 2022
- Warman: 21.51, a decrease of 38.47 percentage points compared to 2022
- Martensville: 34.48, an increase of 21.92 percentage points over 2022
Overall, Saskatchewan’s CSI rating was 160.2 last year, an increase of two percentage points compared to 2022.
Normally, the CCJS produces an information spreadsheet that compares CSI values for 330 police services in communities with a population of over 10,000 people and ranks those municipalities from 1 to 330. The data comes from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) survey.
North Battleford placed first nationally in 2022 with an overall CSI rating of 557.1.
The other Saskatchewan communities on the list last year included Prince Albert in fifth spot, Yorkton in 23rd place, Saskatoon in 39th spot, Moose Jaw in 41st spot, Regina in 51st place, Swift Current in 73rd spot, Weyburn in 99th spot, Estevan in 107th place, Warman in 297th spot, and Martensville in 316th place.
However, Stats Canada explained in an email to the Moose Jaw Express that it has stopped producing those rankings based on “significant … feedback” it has received from communities.
“Concerns were expressed about the use of CSI rankings without an appropriate consideration of local communities and the broader social context, which sometimes resulted in misinterpretation and misunderstandings,” the organization said.
Statistics Canada has made “new products” available to accompany the latest crime data to help Canadians understand and “appropriately use” the CSI data, it continued. One new product includes information about the importance of considering critical contextual data when interpreting and analyzing crime data.
However, Statistics Canada’s crime data remain unchanged, while the CSI value and other important crime data will continue to be available for all police services reporting to the UCR, the email added. The information can be found in online data tables on the Statistics Canada website at statcan.gc.ca under “
