SA still hostage to violent crime

Two sets of crime numbers released in recent weeks reveal just how unsafe South Africans feel, even though the number of violent crimes has supposedly fallen. They reveal, too, just how little confidence citizens have in the police — and that in turn calls into question the extent to which our crime statistics might be under-reporting reality.

At least we now have more regular reporting from the South African Police Service (SAPS), after the government announced in June 2016 that police crime statistics would be released every quarter, to allow for swifter responses to changing trends.

The latest SAPS numbers, released on Friday, cover the period from April to December 2016, providing a view of crime drawn from reports to the police. The latest Victims of Crime survey released by Stats SA in February complements that with a bottom-up view drawn from household surveys.

Superficially, the SAPS crime stats seem to be good news. The number of contact crimes in April-December was down almost 2% compared with the same period in 2015, with 10 fewer murders and declines in the number of sexual offences, as well as assault and common robbery.

But in the category of serious violent crimes, those that make people most fearful in their daily lives and disrupt the economy the most, the trend is definitely up.

Indeed, the number of so-called trio crimes — armed robbery and hijacking — increased by 8.2% to well over 45,000 cases with carjacking jumping by almost 15%, armed robbery in people’s homes by 5.2% and robbery in business premises by 6.5%. What’s more, although the trend in contact crimes improved significantly from 2006 until 2012, since then it has deteriorated. The murder total has increased for each of the past three years and armed robberies have climbed.

That is scary stuff. No wonder so many of those surveyed by Stats SA say they don’t feel safe in their homes or neighbourhoods; and they definitely don’t feel safe walking around alone at night.

A striking feature of the survey results is that households reported a sharp decline in the number of house robberies and housebreakings over the five years between 2010 and 2015-16, with other crimes such as the theft of personal property declining too.

Despite this, says Stats SA, “South Africans feel that violent and property crime is increasing to the extent that the majority of households don’t feel safe to walk alone in parks or allow their children to play freely in their neighbourhoods”.

A real problem is how many of those surveyed do not trust the police. Stats SA found the majority of households said they did not report crime incidents to the police because they believed the police could not or would not do anything.

That casts serious doubt on the accuracy of the police figures, especially when it comes to crimes such as rape. The SAPS stats show declines in sexual offences for each of the past three years. But far from being a good sign, that is probably a bad one, indicating that the many victims of sexual violence in SA feel less and less confident in the ability of SA’s law enforcement system to help them. That might curb reporting of other crimes such as assault as well.

The high degree of dysfunction in the police service, particularly at leadership level where allegations of corruption and infighting are made almost daily, are also an alarming indicator of the police’s capacity to fight crime.

So while the improved transparency on crime numbers is welcome, the numbers themselves remain cause for deep concern. As long as high levels of violent crime continue to blight people’s lives at home and at work, SA cannot hope to build a cohesive or a prosperous society.

A REAL PROBLEM IS HOW MANY OF THOSE SURVEYED DON’T TRUST THE POLICE