LAC LA BICHE - Lac La Biche’s Crime Severity Index (CSI) is roughly three times the overall provincial rate according to a report shared with Lac La Biche County Council by the RCMP on Aug. 26.
While Alberta’s CSI dropped 9 per cent between 2023 and 2024 to 95.6, the CSI in Lac La Biche increased by 1 per cent to 303.3.
The CSI is a measure for tracking crime which accounts for the number of crimes reported to police and the relative seriousness of those crimes.
According to the report, which uses data from Statistics Canada, the last ten years have shown a fairly steady increase in the CSI for Lac La Biche, from 196.4 in 2015 to 303.6 in 2021, with a notable drop in 2021.
It notes, “Detachments with a population close to or less than 5,000 should compare CSI rates with caution (both previous year’s rates for their own jurisdiction and with other detachments.) The lower the population in a jurisdiction, the more easily a CSI value can be influenced by offences that are more serious in nature.”
It also notes that when multiple crimes are committed at the same time, only the most serious offence is counted when calculating the CSI. “Offence counts that are presented in this report will differ from other crime statistics reports.”
According to the report, “the largest driver to the increase in CSI from 2023 to 2024 was an increase in Break & Enter offences.”
Mischief to Property and Robbery also ranked as the top three drivers of the CSI increase, with 79 more mischief offences and four more robberies taking place in 2024 compared to 2023.
According to the report, there were a total of 5,714 files generated by the Lac La Biche RCMP in 2024, a decrease of 2.8 per cent from 2023.
