Statistics Canada released the police-reported crime statistics for 2023 Thursday morning.
One of the biggest parts of the data is what is called the crime severity index. It looks at the number and the severity of crimes to help provide a context of a community. However, it doesn’t factor in demographics into the number, just the data. For this reason, Statistics Canada advised in the release the crime severity index is one piece of the much larger puzzle that helps Canadians better understand the country.
For Weyburn, the crime severity index was up slightly in 2023, going from 78.24 to 83.09. The violent crime severity index, though, declined, falling from 76.88 to 71.07. The total number of reported crimes went up slightly as well, from 877 to 883. Violent crimes were down, from 189 to 160, but property crimes were up, from 366 to 409.
One area of focus in recent years in Weyburn has been the number of impaired driving and drug crimes reported. Both of those areas were up in 2023, with the number of impaired driving incidents reported by police going from 42 to 46, and the number of drug crime incidents going from 15 to 21.
There was a significant drop in the number of assaults reported in Weyburn in 2023, going from 89 to 52.
When the numbers are compared on a per 100,000 basis, police-reported crime statistics are down significantly over the past five years in Weyburn. This includes an 11 percent drop in overall Criminal Code violations and a 16 percent decrease in violent Criminal Code violations. Impaired driving is also down significantly over the past five years, falling by 21 percent.