Crime trends show decline but Government still concerned

Pretoria – Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula says although the crime trends report published Monday indicated a continuation of the steady decline in crime levels in South Africa as seen in the past five years, Government was still concerned that the levels of crime continue to be unacceptably high.

“Government would have wanted to see a more drastic decrease in the levels given, particularly, the interventions that have been made since we started publishing crime statistics regularly from the 2001/2002 Financial Year,” he said.

One of the important interventions that government made was the redeployment of more and better resources to the various police stations in the country where crime fighting actually happens.

A total of 14 504 police members were deployed to 606 stations. Some of the deployees were experienced police managers and commanders who served, previously, at the national and area levels of the South African Police Service. Some of the stations received allocations of reservists who are a force-multiplier to the police.

Releasing the crime stats on Monday, the South African Police Service said there was a decrease in most categories of contact crimes for the 2007/08 financial year.

Compared with the previous year, decreases in eight of the contact crimes categories, which include murder, rape, indecent assault, common robbery including robbery with aggravating circumstances – all brought about an overall decrease of 6.4 percent in 2007/08 compared with the 2006/07 financial year.

Common assault is down 6.6 percent, common robbery is down 9.5 percent, indecent assault by 2.1 percent, rape is down 8.8 percent, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm (GBH) is down 4.6 percent and attempted murder is down 7.5 percent.

Further decreases where recorded in murder with -4.7 percent and robbery with aggravating circumstances also showing a decrease of 7.4 percent.

Police analyst Chris de Kock said the decrease indicated that something was being done well.

"This decrease shows that something is slowly but surely changing in society. It shows hard work not only from the police side but the non governmental organizations and the society in general.”

Although most social contact crimes showed a downward trend, the new significant development in this regard was a marked increase in the murder of children. The number of children murdered increased by 22.4 percent and the number of those falling victim to attempted murder increased by 13.7 percent.

“However, it should be emphasized that these increases are based on low numerical values. The remainder of the contact crimes against children and all the social contact crimes against women experienced decreases.”

Meanwhile, although robbery with aggravating circumstances only accounts for approximately 5 percent of contact crimes and only 2 percent of all serious crimes, the increase in some sub-categories, like robberies at residential premises, robberies at business premises, truck hijackings and car hijackings are of extreme concern, he said. These sub-categories show increases of 13.5 percent, 47.4 percent, 39.6 percent and 4.4 percent respectively.

Police stations that recorded the highest incidents of carjackings were Booysens, Pinetown, Umlazi, phoenix, Sandton, Mondeor, Chatsworth, Midrand, Bramley and Moroka.

House robberies, which President Thabo Mbeki once referred to as that which touches the heart of human security, increased by 13.5 percent.

Although high in other provinces, Gauteng however showed a decrease in this category by 5.4 percent.

Police stations recording the highest incidents of residential robbery included Sandton, Honeydew, Tembisa, KwaMashu, Midrand, Umlazi, Ivory Park, Wierdabrug, Rustenburg and Booysens. – BuaNews