The latest edition of Statistics Canada’s annual crime severity index (CSI), based on 2021 crime statistics, has some bad and some not-so-bad news for Thompson, Manitoba, one of the perennial candidates for the highest overall CSI among cities with more than 10,000 people.
On the not-so-bad side, Thompson didn’t have the highest overall CSI for 2021. That honour went to North Battleford, Saskatchewan., a city not unlike Thompson that is also among the communities with the worst CSI scores year after year after year.
Thompson’s overall CSI score for 2021 was 438.7, while North Battleford’s score was 480.7.
The average CSI score for Canadian cities is 75.3.
CSI scores are calculated using a formula that applies different weights to different types of crimes, based on the relative severity of sentences handed out to people who are convicted of them. Under this formula, which doesn’t look only at how much crime occurs but at the relative seriousness of that crime, a murder carries a lot more weight than an assault, for example.
On the bright side for Thompson is that the city’s overall CSI score is lower than it was for 2020 when it was 452.5 and Thompson had the highest score of any city with a population over 10,000 people.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the violent CSI, which only includes crimes against people and not those against property, Thompson has the worst score by far and it’s worse than it was last year.
Thompson’s violent CSI score for 2021 was 758, 10 times higher than the national average and more than 200 points heard of second-place North Battleford with a score of 518.4. Also not encouraging is the fact that the city’s violent CSI for 2021 was worse than in t was in 2020, when it was 708.6.
The trend is better when it comes to non-violent crime, however. Thompson’s non-violent CSI was second worst among cities with over 10,000 people for the second year in a row, coming in behind North Battleford for 2021, but its score of 322 was lower than in 2020, when it was 359.3.
Other western Canadian cities with above-average high CSI scores include Lethbridge, Alberta, at 128.7, and Kelowna, B.C. at 122.3, according to Statistics Canada.
