New Brunswick is the only province to see an increase in its crime severity index in 2025, says new data from Statistics Canada.
According to StatCan’s 2025 Police-Reported Crime statistics, New Brunswick’s CSI rose from 84.4 to 90.4, a six per cent increase.
And according to the report, Saint John saw a 20 per cent CSI increase year-over-year — from 50 to 70 — making it the largest jump of any Canadian metropolitan area.
Unlike the crime rate, which measures the volume of crime, the CSI measures the volume and severity of crime.
The index combines all police crimes into a single score to show how serious crime is in an area.
To determine severity, all crimes are assigned a weight based on sentences handed down by Canadian Courts. More serious crimes are assigned higher weights, while less serious crimes are assigned lower weights.
As a result, more serious offences have a greater impact on changes in the index.
Saint John Police Force Staff Sgt. Shawna Fowler believes that’s the main reason behind Saint John’s CSI increase.
In an email statement, she said in 2025 SJPF had seven murders and three attempted murders, compared to three murders in 2024.
“The seriousness of those offences would significantly impact the CSI,” she said.
Fowler also pointed out that while the CSI increased by 20 per cent, the city’s crime rate only increased by three per cent — which, according to her — suggests that the increase was driven largely by the severity of a small number of incidents rather than a significant increase in overall crime volume.
Fowler added that implementation of the Versaterm Records Management system in 2025 — a cloud-based platform designed for law enforcement and public safety agencies across the U.S. and Canada to capture information, reduce administrative work, and streamline workflows — could have also impacted the index due to the differences in reporting practices.
She explained in Versaterm that more calls for service are requiring a file number, and said Statistics Canada collects data based on incident reports rather than calls for service.
“Some of the increase may reflect reporting and file-creating changes rather than the changes in criminal activity itself,” she said.
Additionally, Fowler noted that the Saint John metropolitan area consists of the city plus neighbouring communities around it, meaning that the crime statistics would also include data from the Kennebacasis Regional Police, Hampton RCMP, and Grand Bay-Westfield RCMP, and changes in those jurisdictions would also be reflected in the overall CSI reported.
Two other major metropolitan areas in the province also saw significant increases.
Fredericton’s CSI rose seven per cent, and Moncton’s increased by 11 per cent, going from 73.5 to 80.5 and 94.6 to 105.6, respectively.
The national CSI average in 2025 is 75.01, a five per cent decrease from last year, and the second straight annual decrease following an upward trend that began in 2015, according to StatCan.
The report said most areas in the country saw reductions, besides New Brunswick and Nunavut, which was the only territory to see an increase, up by 11 per cent.
According to StatCan, some of the changes that contributed to the decline of the index last year include an 11 per cent decline in break and enter, a 16 per cent decrease in motor vehicle theft, a 21 per cent decline in incidents involving child sexual abuse and exploitation material, among others.
The data also showed an overall decrease in Canada’s crime rate in 2025, declining by two per cent.
Editor’s note: The headline of a previous version of the story wrongly characterized that Saint John lead crime severity index in Canada, when the metropolitan area saw the highest increase in 2025. The story’s headline has now been changed to: Saint John records Canada’s biggest rise in crime severity as N.B. breaks from national trend, to better characterized the increase. We apologize for the mistake.
