Crime Trends Across Alberta

Why Homeowners Should Care What Crime Is Like In Other Regions

These comparisons and rankings are meant to help homeowners improve the home security of their property. If some regions of similar geography, population and economics can have a very low crime rate, while others are experiencing chronic problems, it would make sense that the high crime areas need to copy what the low crime areas are doing to improve their results.

Homeowners can have much better conversations with elected officials when the facts can be laid out so clearly.

Coming soon is a review of how elected Councillors and Mayors can impact the safety of the home owners they represent. The impact a local Council can make, can be dramatic.

Here are the places across Alberta with the highest 90 day crime trend.

The highest average crime rate appears first at the bottom of each chart and the lowest of the six places appears on the right.

The pink, yellow and green lines indicate crime levels that are really bad for the different types of location.

Rural communities are the safest and the green line shows a high crime rate for rural areas is often 2.5 crimes per 1,000 residents.
Cities across Alberta contain the majority of the population. The yellow line shows a high crime rate for cities at 4.0 crimes per 1,000 residents.
Town crime across Alberta can jump to really high levels. The pink bar shows a high crime rate for towns is 8.0 crimes for every 1,000 resident.

Eastern Alberta – Highest Crime Rates in the Province

Places tracked that didn’t make the top six are listed here. These are in order of their average crime rate from highest to lowest. Cold Lake 149, Athabasca County, MD of Bonnyville, and Bruderheim.

Edmonton Region – Highest Urban Crime

Unexpectedly, crime rose in Edmonton to really high levels in June.

I kept wondering if there was some problem with the Edmonton Police Service Data or the way we were collecting and measuring the data. In the end, I’m really confident the crime rate in Edmonton is bad as of June 2022. The reason for my confidence is seeing how high the crimes rates jumped in Leduc, Wetaskawin, and Leduc County. Those are regions all very close to Edmonton and this data is provided by the RCMP and not the Edmonton Police Service. With both police services confirming a jump to very high levels the data appears to be accurate.

Places tracked that didn’t make the top six are listed here. These are in order of their average crime rate from highest to lowest. St. Albert, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, and Sherwood Park.

Calgary Region

Calgary crime data from Calgary Police Service is only available from April. The Crime rate currently may be much higher. Judging by the crime rates in nearby communities I would guess the rate hasn’t jumped up significantly as the crime in nearby areas hasn’t risen significantly between May and June.

Places tracked that didn’t make the top six are listed here. These are in order of their average crime rate from highest to lowest. Cochrane, Foothills County, Okotoks, High River.

Central Alberta

Here are the six locations with the highest average crime rate in the last 90 days.

Places tracked that didn’t make the top six are listed here. These are in order of their average crime rate from highest to lowest. Innisfail, Eckville, Barrhead, Drayton Valley, Red Deer County, Delburne, Lac Ste. Anne County, Sylvan Lake, Ponoka County, County of Wetaskawin, Brazeau County, Bashaw, Sturgeon County, Penhold, Westlock County, Morinville, Lacombe County, Clearwater County, Bowden, Blackfalds, Camrose County, Beaumont, Didsbury.

Alberta Rockies

Southern Alberta + Badlands

The safest place in Alberta is the southern part of the province. People in other areas would be amazed how much less crime there is in these regions. Here are the six locations with the highest crime rates.

Places tracked that didn’t make the top six are listed here. These are in order of their average crime rate from highest to lowest. Stettler County, County of Forty Mile.

If some regions of similar geography, population and economics can have a very low crime rate, while others are experiencing chronic problems, it would make sense that the high crime areas need to copy what the low crime areas are doing to improve their results.

Explanations About the Data

Crime rates are calculated using a per 1,000 resident basis. The trend of the highest crime rate was done by taking the average crime rate over the last 90 days and then ranking them from highest to lowest.

There are over 300 Municipalities in Alberta counting Villages and Reserves. We currently track about 100 Municipalities spread out across the eight regions of the province. Smaller police services that do not publicly report their crime rates are not included.

If anyone knows a way to include data from the smaller police services organizations please contact Lightcatch.