Each year, Statistics Canada compiles the crime severity index (CSI).
While it might cause some to roll their eyes, in part due to the complex, weighted nature of the findings, it does create an interesting study of how much crime exists in the area.
It’s not just busy work for Stats Canada’s number crunchers.
The CSI figure for the area covered by the Carnduff RCMP stood at 49.49, down from 53.10 in 2019. That shouldn’t be a surprise, since we were in the midst of a pandemic for the last 9 1/2 months of the year. Perhaps the only surprise is that the drop wasn’t greater.
Carlyle’s CSI is higher, at 111.07, but it was down from 131.03 the previous year, the type of decline you might expect to see due to a pandemic.
People like me typically eat up the information contained in the CSI report. We love to scan the document, see where their community ranks and look at the other data included, such as the clearance rate for a police service.
For a nerd like me, crunching numbers is fun. I like to see a number and try to figure out how it was calculated, to the best of my ability.
But despite my interest in the CSI, I know that the most important thing is whether people face safe in their community.
I don’t spend as much time as I’d like in Carlyle, Carnduff, Oxbow, Kipling and some of the other wonderful communities in the southeast region. There are so many great towns and villages for us to explore.
I believe that people who come to these areas feel safe, too. It shows in the number of tourists that are attracted. There are so many campgrounds and other locations. If people didn’t feel safe, if they didn’t have good experiences when down here, if they were victims of a crime, they likely wouldn’t come back. They’d go somewhere else.
These communities are safe.
When I walk down Carlyle’s great Main Street, I feel safe. Sure, I lock my car door, but that’s largely a function of habit. I’m not looking over my shoulder, I’m not seeing street crime, and I don’t expect to see someone getting mugged in a back alley, like you might see in larger centres.
Do people lock the doors of their homes, when 30 years ago they might have left them unlocked? Sure, but that’s a reflection of awareness, rather than our communities being less safe.
Yes, there is crime. Yes, there are issues that need to be addressed. But that’s a reality in every community.
We also have to remember that the crime severity index is not kind to smaller communities. The RCMP detachments for Carlyle, Carnduff and Kipling are not included in the national rankings because the areas they serve have a population of under 10,000 people.
But all it takes is one or two serious incidents to skewer the numbers, while in a large city, like Toronto or Montreal, they can have a lot of more serious crimes before their CSI soars.
If you’ve walked in Toronto alone at night, and if you’ve walked on your own in Carlyle, Kipling or Carnduff at night, where do you feel safer? That’s the most important question, not where we stand according to some weighted data.
While the crime severity index measures trends such as violent crime or non-violent crime, and gives it weight, the people who suffer a non-violent crime are still victims. A theft of $5,000? There’s a victim? Spray painting vandalism and other forms of mischief? There were victims.
All of these incidents lead to us being more likely to lock our doors or purchase alarm systems or feel a little more paranoid.
But we should still feel safe when we walk through our communities or when we leave our homes or when parents allow their children to go to the playground.
That we can feel safe is a reflection of the quality law enforcement we have in the community, and the character of the people living in the southeast.
In the end, that’s the truest measure of safety.
