Last week, Statistics Canada released their country-wide 2021 crime severity index data.
When the local media reported on this update, they highlighted Lethbridge’s high ranking (see here, here, here, here, and here), but I wanted to cover some details and context that seems to have been missed.
According to the data, and the media reporting I linked to above, Lethbridge had the third highest crime severity index in the country, at 118.97, which is down from 129.48 the year before.
Winnipeg ranked the highest, at 136.62, followed by Kelowna, in second place at 128.02.
The next highest Alberta city is Edmonton, which is in 8th place at 100.39, up from 97.05 last year. Calgary is at 75.22, bumping them to 16th place; last year, they were in 17th place at 72.01, and the year before, they were in the top 10.
So, even though Lethbridge’s crime rate has dropped, it still has the third highest in the country. That seems pretty bad, right?
Well, yes, kind of.
The first thing to keep in mind is that this data is for the Lethbridge census metropolitan area, not just Lethbridge itself, something other media outlets don’t seem to be mentioning.
Statistics Canada defines the Lethbridge CMA as pretty much Lethbridge and Lethbridge County.
So, the CSI for the Lethbridge CMA includes crime reported by the Lethbridge Police Services, as well as the local RCMP detachment for crime that occurs outside Lethbridge but within the county.
As well, in recent years, people who read the media coverage of Lethbridge’s crime rate tried linking it to the supervised consumption site. After all, the CSI for the Lethbridge CMA was the highest in the country for each of the 3 years the SCS was open.
Let’s look at the data before and after the SCS opened then.
| Year | CSI |
| 2016 | 103.45 |
| 2017 | 124.50 |
| 2018 | 138.73 |
| 2019 | 141.79 |
| 2020 | 138.65 |
| 2021 | 128.65 |
| 2022 | 118.97 |
Keep in mind that Lethbridge didn’t become a CMA until 2016, so we don’t have CMA data for it prior to 2016, but there’s more coming on that in a few more paragraphs.
As you can see, the CSI for the Lethbridge CMA did increase every year while the CSI was open. Plus, in 2019, it was at its highest point over the last 5 years.
However, keep in mind that the SCS didn’t open until 2018, yet the CSI increased the year before it even opened. Not only that, but that year was the largest increase in the CSI in the 4-year period.
Sure, the 2019 CSI was higher than the 2018 CSI, but the change between the two was the smallest change over the previous 3 years. In fact, it was roughly 1/10 the increase of the CSI in the year before the SCS opened.
In other words the rate at which the CSI is increasing was slowing down. So it’s not surprising with a decreasing rate of growth in the crime rate, we’d eventually see an actual decrease in the CSI, as we did last year.
And while some people might be quick to conclude that since the SCS closed down part way through 2020, it’d make sense that crime would drop, as I said, the CSI was already growing more slowly each year, so it was trending down anyhow.
Not only that, but the Lethbridge CMA had the highest CSI in the country in both 2017 and 2021, and the SCS wasn’t open in either of those years. And in 2016, the CSI in the metro Lethbridge area was the fourth highest in the country.
Third, let’s compare the CSI to just the crime reported by the LPS, for only the city of Lethbridge.
| Year | Lethbridge CMA | City of Lethbridge |
| 2016 | 103.45 | 121.06 |
| 2017 | 124.50 | 140.76 |
| 2018 | 138.73 | 161.33 |
| 2019 | 141.79 | 160.97 |
| 2020 | 138.65 | 158.50 |
| 2021 | 128.65 | 148.93 |
| 2022 | 118.97 | 134.73 |
The first thing you might notice is that the CSI jumps when you exclude county crime from the data. Quite a bit. We go from 118.97 for the CMA to 134.73 for the city proper.
But.
If we look a bit closer at the city-only data, we actually see that the CSI dropped the last 4 years, compared to 2018. Plus, if we include all Alberta communities (not just the CMAs of Calgary, Edmonton, and Lethbridge), Lethbridge drops from 3rd place in crime severity to 57th in the province, even though its CSI is higher without the county. And that’s a drop of 6 spots from 2021, when it was in 51st place.
| Maskwacis, RCMP, rural | 756.52 |
| Chateh, RCMP, rural | 727.63 |
| Blood Tribe (Standoff), municipal | 497.18 |
| Piikani Nation, RCMP, rural | 480.24 |
| Wood Buffalo, RCMP, rural | 454.9 |
| St. Paul, RCMP, municipal | 439.95 |
| Bonnyville, RCMP, municipal | 421.15 |
| Fort Chipewyan, RCMP, rural | 419.06 |
| St. Paul, RCMP, rural | 403.31 |
| High Level, RCMP, rural | 388.06 |
| Wetaskiwin, RCMP, municipal | 367.16 |
| Elk Point, RCMP, rural | 355.05 |
| Red Earth Creek, RCMP, rural | 346.06 |
| Lakeshore Regional, municipal | 324.32 |
| Gleichen, RCMP, rural | 315.43 |
| High Prairie, RCMP, rural | 312.44 |
| Desmarais, RCMP, rural | 306.74 |
| Cold Lake, RCMP, rural | 288.16 |
| Tsuut’ina, municipal | 248.24 |
| Lac La Biche, RCMP, rural | 240.45 |
| Peace River, RCMP, municipal | 240.45 |
| Slave Lake, RCMP, municipal | 237.64 |
| Valleyview, RCMP, rural | 236.91 |
| Mayerthorpe, RCMP, rural | 234.81 |
| Cold Lake, RCMP, municipal | 232.85 |
| Bonnyville, RCMP, rural | 198.98 |
| Lloydminster, RCMP, municipal | 196.97 |
| Westlock, RCMP, municipal | 196.7 |
| Drayton Valley, RCMP, municipal | 196.07 |
| Rocky Mountain House, RCMP, municipal | 192.49 |
| Grande Cache, RCMP, rural | 192.21 |
| Ponoka, RCMP, municipal | 188.61 |
| Smoky Lake, RCMP, rural | 187.31 |
| Rocky Mountain House, RCMP, rural | 185.96 |
| Fox Creek, RCMP, rural | 185.56 |
| Three Hills, RCMP, rural | 175.87 |
| Peace River, RCMP, rural | 175.86 |
| Boyle, RCMP, rural | 175.15 |
| Breton, RCMP, rural | 174.39 |
| Leduc, RCMP, rural | 174.22 |
| Redwater, RCMP, rural | 173.3 |
| Red Deer, RCMP, municipal | 163.02 |
| Slave Lake, RCMP, rural | 160.55 |
| Viking, RCMP, rural | 158.36 |
| Athabasca, RCMP, rural | 158.06 |
| Grande Prairie, RCMP, municipal | 157.31 |
| Sundre, RCMP, rural | 148.79 |
| Vegreville, RCMP, rural | 147.32 |
| Swan Hills, RCMP, rural | 146.19 |
| Wainwright, RCMP, municipal | 145.24 |
| Drumheller, RCMP, municipal | 144.87 |
| Faust, RCMP, rural | 144.53 |
| Edson, RCMP, municipal | 143.15 |
| Coronation, RCMP, rural | 142.76 |
| Vegreville, RCMP, municipal | 139.7 |
| Vermilion, RCMP, rural | 136.46 |
| Lethbridge, municipal | 134.73 |
This drop in crime severity follows a multi-year trend of falling CSI increases, as I pointed out three summers ago.
Here’s what the rate of increase looks like over the past 20 years.
In 2014, crime severity skyrocketed in Lethbridge, probably fuelled by the drug crisis. This was by far the largest single-year increase over the last 20 years.
Since then, however, the rate of increase for the CSI has been trending down. And if we look specifically at the years the SCS was operating, we see that the CSI increased at only 14.28% during its first year (compared to 16.04% the year before it opened). During its second full year of operation, not only was the change in CSI smaller, it actually decreased, as I pointed out earlier.
Even though the CSI was still fairly high in 2019 (higher than it was in 2017, for example), it wasn’t the highest it’s ever been. Even 2018 wasn’t the highest. In 1999, for example, the CSI was 181.49—more than 20 points higher than it was in 2019—and that was nearly 20 years before the SCS opened.
If we’re going to say that the SCS caused the CSI to increase in 2018, then we must say that the SCS caused the CSI to decrease in 2019, as well as in 2020, given that it was still open for 8 months that year, before it shut down after the UCP government cancelled provincial funding.
Either that or we say that something else was affecting crime severity in Lethbridge, especially since it had been increasing for the 4 years prior to the SCS opening.
One final thing. Here’s how CSI breaks down for violent and non-violent crime.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CSI | 140.76 | 161.33 | 160.97 | 158.66 | 149.74 | 134.73 |
| Change over prev year | 16.27% | 14.61% | -0.22% | -1.44% | -5.62% | -10.02% |
| Violent CSI | 99.68 | 116.94 | 119.06 | 125.07 | 130.33 | 130.41 |
| Change over prev year | 18.95% | 17.32% | 1.81% | 5.05% | 4.21% | 0.06% |
| Non-violent CSI | 155.20 | 176.91 | 175.67 | 170.37 | 158.77 | 137.59 |
| Change over prev year | 15.67% | 13.99% | -0.70% | -3.02% | -6.81% | -13.34% |
Here, we see that for both of the first 2 years the SCS was open, crime increased at a slower rate than it did the year before it opened. In every category: generalized CSI, violent CSI, and non-violent CSI.
In 2019, not only did the violent crime severity index increase at basically 1/10th the rate it did the year before, the non-violent CSI and the generalized CSI both decreased last year. And although the violent CSI increased last year, that increase, once again, was much lower than the increase seen between 2017 and 2018, as well between 2016 and 2017.
