For a second year in a row, Yorkton showed a significant drop in its crime severity ranking of cities with more than 10,000 population.
According to Statistics Canada, Yorkton ranked 20th in overall crime severity index out of 304 cities in the country compared to ninth overall last year.
The big decrease in overall ranking was due to a huge drop in violent crime. In 2012, Yorkton ranked 16th in violent crime severity. This year the city was 55th with only 346 incidents, down from 461 last year. Yorkton is still 12th in the nation for non-violent crime, however, which accounts for the 20th overall ranking.
Yorkton Mayor Bob Maloney was cautiously optimistic about the numbers.
"It's great to hear, but it's all relative," he said, pointing out that with smaller centres such as Yorkton, a year with a single murder could quickly skew the ranking dramatically.
Despite the ranking, Maloney is confident the general public is not in physical danger as most of the violent crime is domestic.
"There's not a lot of random violence," he said. "I think we've got a pretty safe community in that respect."
The mayor was happy, however, to see a decrease of more than 25 per cent in violent incidents.
"It's nice to see progress in that area," he said.
The downward local trend is reflective of Canadian crime rates in general. The overall crime severity index nationally was down 8.9 per cent while violent crime severity decreased by 9.97 per cent.
In Saskatchewan, the reduction closely echoed national numbers at 9.1 and 9.9 per cent respectively for overall and violent crime severity. Nevertheless, Saskatchewan still leads the rest of the provinces with a crime severity index of 125.73, nearly double the national average of 68.72.
Saskatchewan cities also hold the dubious distinction of highest overall and violent crime severity. Of the 33 largest cities in the country, referred to as census metropolitan areas (CMAs), Regina and Saskatoon hold a significant lead in overall crime severity with indices of 109.3 and 99.1 respectively. Winnipeg still leads the CMAs in violent crime severity with Saskatoon and Regina occupying third and fourth place in that category after Thunder Bay.
North Battleford holds onto the title of crime capital of Canada with the highest overall crime severity index for the fifth year running. In 2013, North Battleford also took the lead in violent crime surpassing Thompson, Manitoba, which had been Canada's most violent city from 2010 to 2012.
Prince Albert also made the top five behind North Battleford, Thompson, Yellowknife (NWT) and Williams Lake (BC).
Western Canada fared much worse than the east in both overall crime severity and violence. In the overall rankings, a city east of the Manitoba-Ontario border does not appear until 27th place. In fact, there are only three eastern cities in the top 50. In terms of violent crime, there are only two eastern cities in the top 30.
