WEYBURN – Violent crimes are down in Weyburn from the previous year, according to the annual crime severity index, while non-violent crimes are up.
The Crime Severity Index was released nation-wide on Friday by Statistics Canada, and compares the crime stats from the police departments in 330 communities across Canada with a population over 10,000, 11 of which are in Saskatchewan (including Weyburn).
The Crime Severity Index measures police-reported crimes, and reflects the relative seriousness of the offences. The index also tracks the severity of crimes, to see if certain crimes are up or down in a given community.
The index has an overall crime severity index, and separate indexes for violent and non-violent crimes, so police departments can keep track of which types of crimes are on the increase or are decreasing.
“For instance, both murder and aggravated assault would be considered as violent crimes, but murder would have a higher value than the aggravated assault and therefore have a greater effect on the overall violent crime rating,” said deputy police chief Brent VanDeSype.
The overall crime severity index for Weyburn in 2021 was 78.5, ranking the city as 108th out of 327 jurisdictions across Canada. For 2022, the overall index was up to 81.3, with a ranking at No. 99 out of 330 communities.
Deputy Chief VanDeSype said Weyburn’s CSI “overall” rating was third best in Saskatchewan in 2021, ranking only behind Warman and Martensville.
“In the most recent 2022 CSI report, Weyburn slipped a spot in the ‘overall’ rating to fourth best in Saskatchewan, but it’s not all bad news,” he said.
“Actually it’s fairly positive news as the ‘overall’ rating is broken down into two categories, violent crime and non-violent crime, and Weyburn’s violent crime rating dropped or improved by nearly 19 per cent,” he said.
The violent crime index for Weyburn was weighted at 96.4 in 2021, or No. 96, and in 2022, it dropped to 78.3, which is an 18.1 per cent drop, ranking the city as No. 147. The non-violent crime index was 72.0 in 2021, and rose to 83.2 in 2022, an increase of 11.2 per cent, or No. 87.
“The Crime Severity Index is a very involved process, but if you know how to read the data, you’ll see that Weyburn remains one of the safest places to live,” said the deputy chief.
Violent crimes include robbery, sexual assault level 1, assault level 2, assault level 1 and uttering threats to a person. Non-violent crimes include disturbing the peace, minor thefts, mischief and fraud.
One of the factors used to determine the seriousness of a crime are sentencing data from the courts, and these weights are revised every five years to reflect recent sentencing practices, and to account for any new Criminal Code offences.
