What the latest crime severity index numbers for Waterloo region really says about community
CBC
New data from Statistics Canada is offering a broad picture of the number of crimes happening in local communities and the severity of those crimes.
The data shows Waterloo region is the second highest in the Statistics Canada list of 15 urban areas in Ontario, but one expert says that doesn't necessarily mean the region is crime-ridden.
Jennifer Schulenberg, an associate professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo, joined CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition with host Craig Norris to help break down the data for Waterloo region.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full audio of this interview at the bottom of this article.
Craig Norris: This new data set is called the Crime Severity Index. Let's jump off here by talking about how it's calculated.
Jennifer Schulenberg: The crime severity index is a measure of the seriousness of the crime. Crime rates will tell us how much crime is happening and this measure allows us to understand how it's changing over time and comparing it. It takes the most serious offence committed and then it's assigned a point.
So gaming and betting is six and then murder is over 7,000 [points]. That is based on sentencing data and it's standardized, so that allows those comparisons.
CN: Waterloo region has the second highest crime severity rate compared to other populations of 100,000 people or more in Ontario. So what does this mean for our region?
JS: The crime severity index isn't meant to be used in isolation and it most certainly isn't a universal indicator of safety in the city because it doesn't take account for changes in demographics, so for instance, the [Highway] 401 corridor or in some areas where there's a lot of tourism.
It also doesn't take into account the experiences of crime. Everybody experiences policing differently and you can't use just one measure. So in Waterloo region actually, our numbers have all decreased.
So the overall seriousness that covers all offences is down 4.7 per cent from last year. Our violent crime severity index is down 5.7 per cent and our nonviolent is down 3.7 per cent.
But in the meantime, the national average, we're both still below that. And across Canada, it's increased two per cent overall and three per cent for non-violent.
CN: Non-violent includes traffic stops?
JS: Yes. The other thing to take into consideration is a lot of these jurisdictions have more than one police service that are contributing to those numbers.