When it comes to non-violent crime, P.E.I. is the capital of Eastern Canada.

Crime in small urban areas  (rate per 100,000 people)
	Canada	P.E.I
Property crimes	4,415.1	5,509.2
Violent crimes	1,232.0	988.3

The most recent crime data from Statistics Canada show P.E.I.'s small urban areas with the highest crime rates east of Saskatchewan. This is the first time the federal agency has broken down its numbers by rural, as well as large and small urban areas.

The breakdown shows a higher crime rate in P.E.I.'s largest communities than in even the biggest cities in Eastern Canada.

"I think there might be the misconception out there that crime is a large-city phenomenon," Warren Silver, an analyst with Statistics Canada, told CBC News on Thursday.

"What the data does show us is that it isn't necessarily a large urban phenomenon."

'In some instances it comes down to the significance of reporting.'— Paul Smith, Charlottetown police chief

The data used in the study is from 2005. In terms of property crimes, including thefts and break-ins, you have to go to Winnipeg to find numbers higher than those in P.E.I.'s biggest communities, but the rate of violent crime in P.E.I. is considerably lower.

Statistics Canada defines small urban centres as towns and cities with populations between 1,000 and 100,000. It found in general that the highest crime rates in the country were in small urban centres.

Statistics can be misleading

Charlottetown police Chief Paul Smith cautions about reading too much into the data.

"In some instances it comes down to the significance of reporting. We encourage people to report incidences that happen here. I believe Summerside does similarly," said Smith.

"In some larger centres it may have an incident occur, say a smashed window on a vehicle or something like that, they may not report it for any number of reasons."

On P.E.I., Charlottetown, Kensington, Montague, Stratford and Summerside were classified as small urban areas.