The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
For the third year in a row, Thompson is Canada's most violent crime city, according to federal statistics. Since 2008 there has only been one year _ 2009 _ when Thompson was not Canada's most violent crime city in the annual survey. In measuring the nature and extent of crime for the Juristat Crime Severity Index, Statistics Canada's Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics monitors crimes that are reported by police through the Uniform Crime Reporting survey. It also looks at victimization data collected through the General Social Survey _ Victimization every five years since 1988, with its main objective being to collect data on the experiences of Canadians with crime. Statistics Canada last week released its annual Juristat Crime Severity Index values for 297 communities with at least 10,000 people. Thompson again topped the Violent Crime Severity Index and finished second in both the Overall Crime Severity Index column and Non-Violent Crime Severity Index column. To facilitate comparisons among geographic areas as well as over time, police-reported crime has traditionally been expressed as a rate per 100,000 population. The rankings for 2012 are almost a mirror image of 2010 and 2011 for Thompson. The same annual survey of police-reported crime, however, shows a very different picture nationally. The national crime rate is continuing its 22-year decline and has now dropped to levels not seen since 1972. The police-reported crime rate, which measures the overall volume of crime that comes to the attention of police, continued a long-term decline in 2012, falling three per cent from 2011. The Crime Severity Index (CSI), which measures the severity of crime, also decreased three per cent. Canadian police services reported almost two million criminal incidents (excluding traffic) in 2012, about 36,000 fewer than in the previous year. Thompson Mayor Tim Johnston said Thompson's ranking in 2012 was 'pretty much as expected,' adding: 'With the overall national trend down it will be very difficult for us to move in the ranking.' He said the city 'will continue to focus on the key areas of drugs and gangs, domestic violence and addictions that are clearly the major contributors' to Thompson's place in the rankings. 'We and the RCMP continue to see improvements and we are trending in the right direction,' added the mayor. 'With a small population, one major crime has a huge impact on rankings.' Overall, Statistics Canada reports that Manitoba scores worst in the Violent Crime Severity Index, which measures the relative severity of crimes reported. _ John Barker, Thompson Citizen
