Crime stats ‘reflect violence in SA’

Parliament – A total of 17 805 people were killed in South Africa between April 1 2014 and March 31 2015, the country’s crime statistics, released on Tuesday, showed. This was an increase of 5 399 from the 2013/14 reporting year.

At the release of the crime statistics, Nhleko also said the number of contact related crimes had decreased by 15.6% over 10 years.

These included murder, attempted murder, sexual offences, assault with intention to do grievous bodily harm and common robbery.

Mr Nhleko, briefing Parliament’s police committee, said that contact crimes had increased by 0.9% across all the categories meaning that increases in a few would be larger than in others.

Over the past ten years, police have successfully decreased contact crimes by 17.8%, contact-related crimes by 15.6%, other serious crimes by 7.6% and property-related crimes by 2.3%.

The Minister said other serious crime – including theft, commercial crime like fraud and shop lifting, went down by 2.2% and accounted for 27.8% of all reported crimes.

Nhleko said there was a massive hike in auto and truck hijackings, but a drop in bank robberies and cash-in-transit heists. While crimes against women and children remain a pressing social problem, the figures show progress. Property-related crimes are down by 0.8% in the 2014/15 financial year, compared to the previous year.

While crime levels were generally decreasing, there were categories that saw an increase.

The difference between burglary and aggravated robbery is that residents or employees are present when the robbery takes place.

Following the past two year’s widespread concern over the crime statistics’ integrity, Both Phiyega and Nhleko stressed their reliability.

He has told Members of Parliament the police have entered into a memorandum of understanding with Statistics South Africa to monitor and analyse collected data.

“In essence, the issue of contact crime is a social phenomenon and is a matter that needs to be dealt with at a multi-disciplinary level across society”, he said.

“We’re taking back our power”. So it’s not just about numbers.

Mr Nhleko said that the rate of police detection of these crimes was on the increase. Nhleko said.