Province leads in victims of violent crime per capita

On a per-capita basis, Saskatchewan had more victims of violent crime than any other Canadian province in 2016.

According to a report released Wednesday by Statistics Canada, police counted 20,904 victims of violent crime involving death or bodily harm, making the per capita rate 1,840 people out of every 100,000 — almost double the national per capita rate of 951 victims per 100,000 citizens.

Assaults were the most common crime suffered by victims in Saskatchewan, consisting of 75 per cent of the crimes reported by police. About 10,500 of the more than 15,000 assault victims suffered minimal bodily harm, while 3,847 were assaulted with a weapon or otherwise sustained more significant injury; 416 were seriously injured, potentially in a life-threatening way.

Victims who were threatened and victims of sexual assault were the second and third most common violent crime victims in the province.

A large number of children were victims of sexual offences in 2016. The report says people under the age of 12 made up 23 per cent of all sex offence victims. Young people aged 12 to 17 accounted for 33 per cent of sex crime victims. Sexual crimes against boys were reported at a higher rate than those against girls, the report notes.

Fifteen per cent of Saskatchewan’s homicide victims were also under the age of 17 — and the majority of them were girls.

The report also highlighted that 56 per cent of violent crime vic- tims were women, and they represented a much larger percentage of victims of sexual offences (88 per cent,) criminal harassment (76 per cent) and indecent and harassing communications (73 per cent).

Women were also much more likely to reach out for help from police-based services offered to help victims of crime. Of the nearly 12,000 victims assisted by these programs, 65 per cent were women.

Although Saskatchewan ranked at the top of the provincial violent crimes rates, the number of victims per capita of violent crimes in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon were substantially higher. The Yukon nearly doubled Saskatchewan’s per capita rate; the Northwest Territories and Nunavut clocked had about four times Saskatchewan’s per capita rate.