While the American poet T.S. Eliot told us that “April is the cruelest month” when he wrote his poem The Waste Land in 1922, that might well be modified to July for Thompson, Manitoba. The fourth week in July is when Statistics Canada typically releases its annual Juristat Crime Severity Index values for police services policing communities over 10,000 in population, including the Violent Crime Severity Index. It’s a story I have followed and written about for a decade. Even if I was somehow to forget the story one year, my “search engine terms” for https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/, which indicate what kind of things readers are searching the blog for on any given day, start to show this search term every year in late July: “juristat crime severity index,” reminding me it’s that time of year again.
Truth be told, the story hasn’t changed much since I arrived in Thompson in 2007. The usual suspects – North Battleford and Prince Albert in Saskatchewan, along with Williams Lake, British Columbia, and Thompson, Manitoba – more or less rotate the deck chairs on their version of the violent crime Titanic every year, trading spots from time to time for most violent crime community for places of similar size across Canada. Over the last three years, Thompson has finished in fourth, third – and now, as of Monday – top spot with a score of 414.95. Thompson previously had a three-year run as Canada’s most violent crime city in 2010, 2011 and 2012, before improving to a second-place finish in 2013, according to annual federal statistics.
North Battleford posted a Violent Crime Severity Index score of 337.13 for 2016. “It is very good news that North Battleford is no longer the number 1 community in Canada for violent crime,” said Mayor Ryan Bater. “We believe that is due in part to the increased patrols and added emphasis on Community Safety through our Community Safety Strategy.”
To put the new 414.95 score in some perspective, Thompson’s 2014 Violent Crime Severity Index (fourth-highest in the country) score was 227.14, while the score rose to 243.95 in 2015 (third-highest in the country.) Nationally in 2016, Statistics Canada reported July 24, “the overall volume and severity of violent crime, as measured by the violent CSI, was 75.3 and virtually unchanged from the previous year.”
The major crime severity indexes include the Violent Crime Severity Index; Non-Violent Crime Severity Index and Overall Crime Severity Index index – and scores are calculated by assigning crimes different weights based on seriousness as measured by each crime’s incarceration rate and the average custodial sentence courts mete out for each crime. The weighted offences are then added up and divided by population. The crime severity indexes are standardized to a base of 100 which is derived from the index values for the year 2006. A comprehensive review of police-reported crime statistics, the Juristat report covers crimes reported to police, rather than overall crime, which Statistics Canada reports in its General Society Survey of crime victimization undertaken every five years.
If Thompson’s score of 414.95 on the Juristat Crime Severity Index values for police services policing communities over 10,000 in population seems high – and it is – consider some of the earlier 2015 scores in Northern Manitoba: Shamattawa had a Violent Crime Severity Index score of 1,711.18 in 2015, while Leaf Rapids had a score of 1,001.25 two years ago. The score in Nelson House in 2015 was 864.70.
As well since 1962, Statistics Canada has collected information on all criminal incidents substantiated and reported by Canadian police services through its annual Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey. In addition to the UCR Survey, Statistics Canada also collects information on victims’ experiences with crime through the General Social Survey (GSS) on victimization, conducted every five years. Unlike the UCR Survey, the GSS collects data on victim’s perceptions of crime which include criminal incidents that may not have been brought to the attention of the police. These complementary surveys are the main sources of data on crime in Canada.
Each year, the UCR database is “frozen” at the end of May for the production of crime statistics for the preceding calendar year. However, police services continue to send updated data to Statistics Canada after this date for incidents that occurred in previous years. Generally, these revisions constitute new accused records, as incidents are solved and accused persons are identified by police. However, some new incidents may be added and previously reported incidents may be deleted as new information becomes known.
Revisions are accepted for a one-year period after the data are initially released. For example, when the 2016 crime statistics were released July 24, the 2015 data was updated with any revisions that have been made between May 2016 and May 2017. The data is revised only once and then permanently frozen.
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