How a Sask. city changed the way the Crime Severity Index is reported [Video]

A small city in Saskatchewan has helped affect big changes in the way Statistics Canada reports its annual Crime Severity Index (CSI) data.

After years of topping the rankings, the City of North Battleford got together with 10 other similar-sized communities from the four western Canadian provinces this past winter at a conference in Saskatoon to mitigate the unintended negative consequences of the crime severity index, which was reflected when the numbers were released Thursday.

“I think the intention was good to have another metric to look at the trend of crime in your community,” North Battleford Mayor David Gillan said.

“I don’t think it was ever the intention to say, well, how does North Battleford compare to Toronto?”

The federal government describes the police-reported Crime Severity Index (CSI) as a summary measure of the volume and severity of police-reported crime in an area—a city, a province or territory, or …