Recently, Statistics Canada released its latest annual Crime Severity Index and Crime Statistics, which cover the period up to 2024. Langley City’s overall crime rate and Crime Severity Index are at their lowest levels since 1998, the earliest year available on the Statistics Canada website. The following chart shows the overall and violent crime rates over the last decade for Langley City.
Within the overall crime rate is the violent crime rate. Langley City’s lowest violent crime rate occurred in 2014, with a rate of 1,439.85. It was trending up, but is now trending down. Violent crime means crimes against a person, which include incidents such as bar fights and threatening people to murder.
The crime rate is determined by the actual number of police reported incidents per 100,000 population.
The Crime Severity Index can be considered an improvement over raw crime rates, as it takes into account both the volume and seriousness of crimes. One homicide would impact the Crime Severity Index of a community 1,000 times more than one instance of “causing a disturbance,” for example. Statistics Canada determines the weighting for each type of crime based on the length of convictions people receive. The Crime Severity Index is calculated on a per capita basis. The following chart shows the Crime Severity Index over the last decade for Langley City.
Between 2015 and 2022, there was a data entry issue where a large number of “Making, or distribution of child pornography” incidents were misidentified as coming from Langley City. This error was corrected in the 2023 data going forward.
Langley City participated with other western Canadian municipalities to change how the Crime Severity Index data is reported. You can read more about this on a previous blog post and on a press release on Langley City’s website. The short of it is that crime rates and Crime Severity Index data should not be used to rank municipalities against one another, as it is an incorrect use of this data. Crime Rates and the Crime Severity Index are useful to understand trends within a municipality or jurisdiction.
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