The trend for Prince George's crime severity remained on the upswing in 2016, according to a Statistics Canada analysis.
The city was assigned a score of 154.39, an increase of 8.3 points from 2015. It was the second successive year for which there has been an increase after hitting a low of 132.56 in 2013.
It also translated into a rise in the rankings. The city stood at 14th among the 311 communities surveyed, up six spots from the year before.
Coinciding, both the scores and the ranking in terms of violent and non-violent crime also rose. Violent stood at 145.31, up 11.45 points from the year before while non-violent rose by 7.13 points to 157.37.
Called the crime severity index and released last week, the analysis takes the number of police-reported incidents for each offence multiplied by the weight for that offence, based on the sentence typically handed out.
For example, the weighting for murder is about 1,000 times greater than for marijuana possession. Three counts of murder were recorded in 2016, the same as in 2015.
All weighted offences are then added together and divided by the corresponding population total. Finally, the index is standardized to 100 using 2006 as a base year, to make interpretation easier.
Looking at particular offences, 2,465 non-vehicle thefts under $5,000 were reported, up by 252 from the year before; 1,563 mischiefs were reported, up by 180; 324 frauds were reported, up by 56; 607 assaults were reported, up by 31; 25 extortions were reported, up by 22; 55 counts of distributing of child pornography were reported, up by 19; 55 sexual assaults were reported in 2016, up by 14; 121 possessions of stolen property were reported, up by 15; and 37 criminal harassments were reported, up by 10.
Mayor Lyn Hall said the city has put more money into policing in recent years and overall, the city remains "very, very safe."
"I think there is no question the RCMP are doing an extremely good job of policing our community," he added. "And now with the index that's come out, I know they will take another look at their policing and if they have to, they'll make alternate decisions."
North Battleford, SK was ranked No. 1, with a score of 352.89.
Among B.C. communities, only Williams Lake ranked higher. It sat at fourth with a score of 221.62.
The average for the communities surveyed was 71.
The controversial ranking of "Canada's most dangerous cities" by Macleans was based on the crime severity index. In 2016, Prince George was ranked third prompting a rebuke from Hall over how the outcome is reached.
The magazine's version compares the country's 100 most-populous communities and Hall said a comparison of those of similar size would be fairer rather than lumping Prince George in with cities of 400,000 or 500,000 people.
