The City of North Battleford is looking to find out what the actual perception of safety is in the community.
To that end, this week they have launched a study of perceptions of safety. Students from North West College will be conducting the survey, with their training starting Oct. 23. The survey is also available online at https://www.surveymonkey.ca/r/FB9WN5S.
Coming in to partner with the City on the survey is Dr. Tarah Hodgkinson from Simon Fraser University and Griffith University, who designed the survey. Her experience includes 10 years of research into crime prevention and policing. She has worked with communities across North America on crime prevention, including most recently with the City of Saskatoon on crime and safety.
Hodgkinson mentioned the reason she was there was because of North Battleford’s highest-in-Canada Crime Severity Index ranking for communities over 10,000 population as of 2017. She also noted there are some inherent problems with the Crime Severity Index itself.
“My concern was that CSIs are typically quite problematic for cities that are the size of North Battleford,” said Hodgkinson.
“CSIs tend to measure based on denominator and tends to be impacted dramatically by denominative factors.”
As an example, she cited the situation in the Northwest Territories, with a population of 33,000. By that measure, if they have one homicide a year, it translates into a homicide rate of three per 100,000 people. Meanwhile, the national rate is 1.4 per 100,000.
“That’s obviously a factor of population size, and that’s something that we are seeing in North Battleford as well,” said Hodgkinson.
Hodgkinson explained what the survey entails. She said it will take 15 to 20 minutes to complete, and will be a “substantial and rigorous study” based on the most current research information of safety perceptions.
The sections include questions on community involvement/social integration, the use of public space, the feeling of safety, perceptions of crime, victimization, procedural justice and police legitimacy and demographics.
The intention is to obtain as many responses as possible, for what Hodginson calls a “statistically significant” survey of perceptions of safety. A total of 374 responses are needed to achieve that.
She says she believes North Battleford will be the first “rural community” in Canada to conduct this kind of study.
The intention is to complete the data collection by January 2019, and have preliminary results of summary statistics in March 2019.
The intention is for the City to have a report by June 2019. Then, Hodgkinson will submit an academic publication by December 2019 where she will compare the stigma of the high crime rate to the actual perceptions of safety on the ground.
She said, based on her previous research, it is “very rare that communities that even have high crime rates end up dealing with high perceptions of crime and safety as well.”
In his report to council, Community Safety Co-ordinator Herb Sutton encouraged local residents to respond.
“I really hope that our public, our residents, take the time to participate in this study,” said Sutton.
“I would like to see a thousand or more responses. This is the public’s opportunity to have a say, as has been mentioned. So I really want to encourage the public to fill that survey out, it’s very important work.”
