Violent Crime Severity drops in Guelph - Property Crime Trends Drive Overall CSI Increase

Statistics Canada has released the 2025 Crime Severity Index (CSI). The annual CSI evaluates both the number and relative severity of police-reported crimes across the country under the categories of violent and non-violent crime. The results demonstrate that Guelph continues to be a safe community, with our violent crime severity index falling by more than 4.6% from 2024.

In 2025, our members worked closely with our community to advance a number of initiatives including the launch of our dedicated Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Human Trafficking (HT) Unit. The establishment of the IPV/HT Unit served to highlight the magnitude of these terrible crimes in our community and allowed us to greatly increase our investigative and prosecution efforts as well as our programs and partnerships to support victims and survivors. The work done in 2025 will remain an important area of focus moving forward.

While the Guelph Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) saw a decrease in the violent crime severity index, the non-violent crime severity index increased by 6.3% in 2025.

The increase in non-violent CSI can largely be attributed to increases in: 

• Break and Enters – with 379 reported occurrences in 2025 (a 10.7% increase over 2024 numbers) 

• Thefts – with 2,475 reported occurrences in 2025 (a 3% increase over 2024 numbers)
•  Mischief – with 730 occurrences in 2025 (a 12.4% increase over 2024 numbers).

Property crimes have a significant impact on our residents, both financially and emotionally.  The need to continue targeting these local criminal offense trends, while working with community partners to prevent victimization and improve public safety, will be met by this Service through an increase in targeted patrols and concerted efforts to identify, deter and prosecute those individuals who are committing these property-related crimes in our city.

The violent and non-violent CSIs combined to see the Guelph CMA’s overall CSI increase by 2% resulting in a 12th place ranking amongst the 41 CMAs in Canada in 2025.

“We are pleased to see the reduction in the violent crime severity index and very proud of the important work done by our members together with our community to address both intimate partner violence and human trafficking,” said Guelph Police Chief Gord Cobey. “We are also very mindful of the continued work required to support our citizen’s feelings of safety and this includes addressing the rising rates of property crime observed in 2025.”

More information in relation the 2025 CSI can be found here

Click here to read our 2025 Annual Report