A national survey which reports the severity of crime in different municipalities across Canada is showing a reduction in Guelph for the first time since 2013.
But those decreases were partially offset by a dramatic increase in frauds.
The Crime Severity Index (CSI) is a measure of police-reported crime that reflects the relative seriousness of individual offences and tracks changes in crime severity. It is released every year by the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics branch of Statistics Canada.
The CSI records an overall CSI, as well as a non-violent and violent CSI scores. In 2019, Guelph’s overall CSI score fell by 9.4 per cent to 64.6.
In the 2019 survey, the reduction in violent CSI in Guelph was the largest decrease in Canada at minus 17.1 per cent. Guelph also had the lowest violent CSI among the 35 municipalities in the survey.
The non-violent CSI fell by seven per cent to a score of 69.
The decrease in violent CSI in Guelph to a score of 52.1 was driven by decreases in sexual violations against children, assault (level 1) and extortion.
Guelph was one of only four communities in the survey to record zero homicides in 2019.
Partially offsetting its drop in CSI, Guelph was one of the five communities experiencing the largest increases in fraud, with a 27 per cent increase in that category.
The overall drop experienced in Guelph is in contrast to an overall average rise in CSI across Canada. In 2019 the national average CSI increased by five percent to a score of 79.5.
The national CSI for 2019 reported dramatic increases in police-reported child pornography, as well as increases in sexual assault, Criminal Code firearms offences and offences related to harassing and threatening behaviours, among others.
National rates of police-reported cannabis offences declined again, in part due to the legalization of cannabis in 2018.
The City of Guelph is one of 35 other census metropolitan areas with populations of at least 100,000 of which 50,000 or more live in the urban core.