The Prince George Citizen

City drops in Maclean’s most dangerous ranking

- Citizen staff

Prince George has been ranked 21st in Maclean’s annual ranking of the most dangerous places in Canada.

That’s down from ninth last year and due largely to a change in how the magazine reaches its conclusion­s.

“Every year, Maclean’s combs through crime statistics to rank the most dangerous places in the country. This year, we added a new measure we think is equally important – whether crime is getting better or worse in a community and how quickly,” wrote Claire Brownell in a story posted Monday on the magazine’s website.

“We looked at 237 urban centres across the country, calculatin­g the difference between their most recent crime severity indexes – a measure used by Statistics Canada that accounts for the seriousnes­s of crimes as well as their number – and their crime severity indexes five years ago.”

Statistics Canada actually ranked Prince George 11th in crime severity for 2017 with a score of 174.68. But since 2012, the number rose 23.86 points.

By comparison, Pembroke, Ont. saw its CSI rise by 33.59, good enough for 11th spot in the Macleans ranking, even though the total stood at 91.17 for 2017.

The CSI for No. 1-ranked Wetaskiwin rose 100.63 points to 257.54.

The new method follows on a tweak made last year, when the magazine decided to include towns with population­s as low as 10,000 for the first time.

In the past, the rankings had included only the 100 biggest cities in Canada.

The full rankings can be found at www.macleans.ca/canadas-most-dangerous-places-2019/.

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