Violent crime dropped in Houston and area last year but non-violent crime inched up, indicate statistics compiled by Statistics Canada.
The drop in violent crime incidents by 37 per cent compares to the increase of eight per cent in non-violent crime, reports the federal agency.
Statistics Canada then gives each crime a different weight so that on an index it has developed, violent crimes are given more weight than non-violent ones.
And when that calculation is done, Houston and area’s crime severity index in 2021 was 180.51, less by 13 per cent from 2020.
Still, the 2021 rate is higher than the 161 in 2019, the 107 in 2018 and the 120 index rating in 2017.
In Smithers, for example, the crime severity index in 2021 was 157.55 compared to 193.26 in 2020.
Sgt. Mark Smaill, until last week the commander of the Houston RCMP detachment, said that while he had not had the chance to examine the Statistics Canada release in detail, he agreed with the trend of a decline in violent crime from 2020 to 2021.
“Anecdotally, I think that’s probably reflective of what’s been going on,” he said.
Smaill also agreed with the statistical increase in non-violent crime, nothing the general increase in overall activity in the area.
“Our population may not have gone up by very much but we are seeing more people coming in and out. There’s more industrial activity in the area. There’s a feeling there are more transients,” he said.
In past comments on crime statistics, smaller municipalities have always been skeptical of the meaningfulness of the crime severity indices noting that a single murder, for example, or a particularly troublesome hospital patient, can skew the numbers dramatically for smaller communities and in any given year might not necessarily reflect the overall safety of the community.
Elected officials in smaller communities also say that because they are service centres for surrounding rural areas, they attract more people and, as a result, more crime than otherwise might be the case.
StatsCan acknowledges that taken discreetly, the numbers can be misleading, but nevertheless maintains they are useful in tracking crime trends and the relative safety of communities.
“The Crime Severity Index is also a tool for measuring the increase or decrease in the severity of crime over time in any given jurisdiction, such as provinces and territories, and for comparing the seriousness of crime among jurisdictions,” an article on the StatCan website states.
“Over time, police-reported crime rates have generally been higher in the west and north than in eastern and central regions of the country. This is also true for crime severity, as measured by the new Crime Severity Index.”