Woodstock Sees Decline in Violent Crime

Thursday, 6 August 2015 07:27

Statistics from the Canadian Centre for Justice show positive results regarding Woodstock's violent crime rate.

WOODSTOCK - Violent crimes are on the decline in the Friendly City.

Recent statistics from the Canadian Centre for Justice show the overall crime severity rating in Woodstock has gone down by 20.9% since 2010. Over that time violent crimes have dropped from 56.2% in Woodstock to 33.3% while the non violent crime severity rate has dropped from 85.3% to 64.5%

Woodstock Chief Bill Renton tells Heart FM overall the numbers are good news, however he says they would still like to see those numbers even lower. "We will continue to work on our core functions in policing and those are keeping the public safe and clearing our occurrences. We will keep working on our crime prevention programs so that we hopefully reduce reported crimes even more and continue working with the community as public safety is a team effort between the police and the community."

The numbers show that we are seeing less severe crimes in the community and since 2010 the overall crime rate has dropped 2.4 %.

- Overall Crime Severity Index saw a 4.7% decrease over 2013
- Crime Severity Index - Violent saw a 21.2% decrease over 2013
- Crime Severity index - Non Violent saw a 1.5% increase over 2013

In terms of the Weighted Clearance Rates, our clearance rates were slightly lower over last year. The breakdown is:

- Overall Weighted Clearance Rate saw a 6.4% decrease over 2013
- Weighted Clearance Rate for Violent Crime saw a 4.4% decrease over 2013
- Weighted Clearance Rate for Non Violent Crime saw a 1% decrease over 2013

Five Year comparison

- The Overall Crime Severity Rating indicates the frequency and severity of local reported crime has been reduced by 20.9% since 2010. There has been a notable reduction in the severity of both violent crime and non-violent crime, such as property crimes.

- The Overall Weighted Clearance Rate has decreased 4.8% since 2010. However, the Woodstock Police Service has achieved a significant 8.7% increase to the weighted clearance rate in the area of violent crime.

Overall Crime Severity Rating: Success (In this area, the lower the rating in this area the better)

- Since 2010, Woodstock's overall Crime Severity Index rating has decreased 20.9% (77.2 to 56.3%)
- The violent crime severity rating has decreased from 56.2 down to 33.3%
- The non-violent crime severity rating has dropped from 85.3 down to 64.5%

Weighted Clearance Rate Success (In this area, the higher the rating the better.):

- Our Overall weighted clearance rate for crimes reported decreased 4.8% since 2010.
- Our weighted clearance rate for violent crime has successfully increased from 75.7 to 84.4% (a 8.7% increase in cleared violent crimes)
- Our weighted clearance rate for non-violent crime was only slightly decreased by 4.9%