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Violent crime severity went down in 2018 Dustin Godfrey dgodfrey@newwestrecord.ca
Violent crime severity went down in New Westminster in 2018, but the overall crime severity number went up slightly thanks to non-violent crime, according to recently released Statistics Canada data. The crime severity index, created by StatsCan in 2009 and published annually for every police force in Canada, takes the crime rate per capita and adds weight to more serious crimes for its calculation. In New West last year, the CSI rated at 74.71, compared with 71.08 in 2017. The CSI’s benchmark is based on the national crime severity in 2006, which is set at 100, not unlike how IQ tests use 100 as their benchmark for an average intelligence. That means New West’s 2018 crime severity was just under three-quarters of the national 2006 rate, while the city was effectively on par with the national average of 75 and well blow B.C’s 87.67 average. While last year marks the fourth year in a row that the CSI has increased nationally, in New West the opposite has typically been true – 2018 marks the first year-over-year increase in crime severity since 2013, when it bumped up to 104.09 from 103 in 2012. But overall, locally and nationally, crime severity is down significantly since the midto early-2000s – especially locally. While the national crime severity index was rated at 100 in 2006, it was at 181.75 in New West in that same year. In the two preceding years, the index was rated over 200 points locally. The index also breaks down into two subcategories – violent crime severity and nonviolent crime severity. In New West, the violent CSI actually dropped year-over-year from 55.6 in 2017 to 43.79 in 2018. That compares with violent crime severity ratings of more than 200 in 2005. That means the increase in crime severity in New West relied entirely on an increase in the non-violent crime severity, which hit 85.66. That compares with a rating of 76.48 in 2017.
ACTING OUTSIDE: Kerri Norris (left) and Tony DeMatteis with the Shadows and Dreams Theatre Company act out a scene in William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors at Queen’s Park on Saturday. The run winds up this weekend, with shows at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. PHOTO JENNIFER GAUTHIER
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