Wendy Verity canvasses communities in North Battleford. (Submitted Photo/Wendy Verity)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Safety Survey

Doing the math: survey looks to gauge public safety in N. Battleford

May 2, 2024 | 4:57 PM

Six years ago, the City of North Battleford commissioned a crime perception survey done.

At the time, Maclean’s Magazine had named North Battleford, which had a crime severity index that was five times the national average, Canada’s “crime capital.”

Tarah Hodgkinson, lead researcher and assistant professor from Ontario-based Wilfrid Laurier University’s Department of Criminology conducted the survey entitled: “Perceptions of Safety in North Battleford” to ask residents not only about their perceptions but also their experiences.

What she discovered was something unlike the community’s reputation.

“We found that generally folks felt safe, generally they felt trust in their police service but there were particular areas that they identified as really unsafe,” said.

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“That was largely downtown and there were particular things that made people feel really unsafe,” she added of people being followed or threatened.

Hodgkinson explained at the time, the community had spent the past decade at the top of the CSI and when the team was asking residents a question about victimization, most responses referred to theft rather than violence.

This time around, the team wanted to see what had changed in the intervening years.

Perceptions

“What the perceptions are since then, if there’s been any improvement based on all the work that’s been done in the city to really address some of those fears and if there’s anything…else that’s emerging that we…don’t know about.”

The original survey was over 50 questions long, broken up into different sections such as demographics, community involvement, police legitimacy and feelings of safety.

“We just sort of streamlined the survey to make it a little bit more accessible, we’re trying to capture some health measures as well – just about our understanding about the interplay between safety and health.”

According to Wendy Verity, a PhD student who studies in the University of Saskatchewan’s Department of Community Health and Epidemiology and the local project co-ordinator, the subject was an interest of hers. A Battlefords resident herself who lived in the community during the “Crime Town” era, she was involved in mental health research and wanted to reach out to Hodgkinson to see whether it was possible to go back to the project to do an update. In 2022, they were approved by the city to go ahead.

“She was interested, I was interested, and the City of North Battleford was interested and so we thought ‘Let’s do it.’”

“My interest in particular is the relationship to mental health and sleep with safety and connectedness,” said Verity.

To gather the data, they have reached out in different ways including canvassing.

“We’ve had pop-up things like setting up at the library, or the Co-op mall, I visited the Friendship Centre, I’ve walked around and canvased businesses and just asked for them to have their employees participate in the survey,” she said

“I’ve stopped at daycares and schools.”

To help reach all the areas, students from North West College – who were also involved in the first survey – joined in to distribute information.

“We’re taking what we learned – what Tarah learned – from the 2018 survey and applying it and just trying to be strategic and smart on the time that we’re out in community,” she said, noting people don’t always answer their door.

The updated survey, meanwhile, looks to get a sense of the city.

“There is a positive spin on it as well, we don’t just want to focus on the negative but looking at the strengths of the community as well,” she said.

Bad reputation

According to Hodgkinson, the city’s CSI rating is neither accurate or fair as the community has a small population.

“It takes all the crime within the city and multiplies it by different levels of severity, right,” she said, noting from there, it divides it by the population.

“If you divide any large number by a small number, it will make a large number.”

Hodgkinson explained that if one homicide occurred in both Saskatoon and North Battleford in a year, Saskatoon would produce a homicide rate of 0.37. North Battleford’s homicide rate would be 7.14.

“That’s how much that population matters and impacts right? So, it’s still one homicide but the population really impacts rates and crime severity indexes,” she said noting she wanted to dig into what was driving the city’s CSI.

“It was actually mischief,” she said.

“That raised real questions about what crimes are actually occurring in North Battleford and what North Battleford actually dealing as compared to other cities in the province.”

The researcher said without mentioning that context it was “wildly irresponsible” for news outlets to report on the city’s CSI and thus the reputation as the “crime capital of Canada.”

“No, it isn’t actually,” she said, adding that it’s not any more violent than other places.

“There’s other communities in Saskatchewan that are far more violent.”

As a result of that reputation, Hodgkinson said there are effects in terms of how people view their city and how safe they feel.

Hope

Meanwhile, Verity said others are responding online but to get a true sample, researchers need to get creative. To do that, different methods must be used to gather data. They are still doing that and are looking to close the survey later this month. Preliminary findings will be published sometime this summer, but the full report will come out next year.

“Obviously, we hope that safety has improved, I think that people in general felt quite safe from the first survey,” she said.

“The City of North Battlefords has done some efforts in the past five years that hopefully are making a difference.”

Meanwhile, on the connection level, the team hopes there too will be a healthy reality.

“In research, we don’t want to be biased obviously, but we’re also humans who hope that communities are…becoming more safe and connected and you know, foster wellbeing.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com