Compared to the year before, a greater proportion of crimes committed in Olds last year were serious ones, according to the 2013 Crime Severity Index, released this summer.In municipal areas, Olds' 2013 score on the index was 109.17, an increase from 103.45 the previous year.Rural areas fared better, with a 58.9 reading, a 10.34 per cent decrease from the previous year.Alberta as a whole had a score of 83.68, a 2.48 per cent decrease from the year before.According to Leonid Shafir, a data production and dissemination officer for the Centre of Crime and Justice Statistics at Statistics Canada, the Crime Severity Index is more accurate than the crime rate, which is calculated by total crime, divided by the population.He explained that the Crime Severity Index assigns weights to different crimes and reflects the proportion of severe crimes to total crimes in a jurisdiction during a time period.“Let's say you have a town with eight homicides and 200 bicycle thefts. And then you have a town with 20 homicides, no bicycle thefts. So if you use crime rate alone, Town A with eight homicides will be worse off because it looks like they have more crime per population,” Shafir said. “But the reality is, that this traditional measure doesn't take into consideration the severity of crime.”The index has several other categories, including measures for violent, non-violent and youth crime severity.In 2013, Olds' violent crime severity reading in municipal areas decreased 14.45 per cent to 70.65.However, on the non-violent severity index, that number jumped 10.95 per cent to 122.96.What the Crime Severity Index does not tell the reader is the total volume of crime, which is why traditional crime rates must still be taken into consideration as well, Shafir said.According to data from Statistics Canada, total “actual incidents” in the Olds municipal area decreased slightly to 1,008 last year.In 2012, there were 1,013.On a per capita basis, Olds would have seen 10,961.29 incidents for every 100,000 people last year.That's higher than the rate of 7,870.09 per 100,000 for the province.The commander of the RCMP detachment in town said that Olds has been a safe community in his experience.“We've got a very quiet community and I'm actually very impressed with the folks here and the community partnerships that our detachment's formed with the community, with the town, with the folks that live here,” Staff Sgt. Joe Sangster said. “We've had a handful of incidents since I've been here but the serious crime is very low here.”“We live in rural Alberta and for the most part, the folks that live in rural Alberta and small towns in our province are amazing.”[email protected]
