Crime severity in New Westminster rose slightly in 2018 over the previous year, a trend that was carried by non-violent crime, according to recently released Statistics Canada data.
The crime severity index, created by StatsCan in 2009 and published every year for every police force in Canada, takes the crime rate per capita and adds weight to more serious crimes to determine the severity of crime in a community.
In New West last year, the crime severity index (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 in 2018.
Compared to the national crime severity in 2018, it’s about on par – Canada’s CSI last year was rated at 75, which also increased slightly from 73.6 in 2017.
While last year marks the fourth year in a row that the crime severity 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 mid- to 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.
“We have been working hard as a police department to reduce crime in our community, but this reduction can also be attributed to our partnerships with other community organizations,” said New West Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Jeff Scott in a statement.
“Additionally, education, social support, and community engagement with a number of our partners in New Westminster have been instrumental in the reduction.”
The index also breaks down into two sub-categories – violent crime severity and non-violent 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.
The city’s crime severity also rates a fair bit lower than that of B.C., which had a CSI rating of 87.67.
Among 16 major Metro Vancouver municipalities, New West had the seventh-highest CSI rating. Of the municipalities that border New West, Richmond (80.26) and Surrey (89.5) had higher CSI ratings, while Burnaby (70.98), Coquitlam (53.49) and Delta (52.68) all had lower ratings.
