Huge hike in sex crimes, hijackings

STATS SA REPORT: UP BY 110% AND 93% RESPECTIVELY

Housebreaking down 8%, home robbery down 25%, theft of property by 12%.

Crime experienced by households and individuals, aged 16 years and older, in South Africa has been decreasing, but hijackings and sexual offences have increased sharply, the Victims of Crime Survey 201617 report released by Statistics South Africa revealed yesterday.

“Approximately 7% of households in SA were victims of crime in 2016-17 compared to about 9% in 2015-16. The estimated number of incidents of crime also decreased for many types of crime,” statistician-general Pali Lehohla said in Pretoria.

Housebreaking incidents decreased by 8%, home robbery decreased by 25%, and theft of personal property decreased by 12%. However, hijacking of motor vehicles and sexual offences increased sharply by 93% and 110%, respectively.

StatsSA said hijackings and sexual offences statistics should be viewed cautiously as they fall into the second level of quality of acceptable statistics due to the small number of respondents who experienced the crimes in this category.

“The number of households which experienced crime have declined percentage-wise, that is the reality. The only province where they [crime figures] tended to increase is Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal — the rest show a decline in experiencing crime, albeit very moderate declines,” said Lehohla.

“Most crime occurs in houses... half of the crimes occur at the household level — housebreaking, livestock theft, home robbery and theft from cars.”

An estimated total of 1.5 million crime incidents were experienced by approximately 1.2 million households in 2016-17. Male-headed households were subjected to a greater percentage of crime compared to female-headed households. Households headed by coloureds were the most likely to be targeted, while households headed by black Africans were the least likely to be.

The Quarterly Employment Survey, also released by StatsSA, showed a decline of 34 000 jobs in the second quarter of 2017 in SA’s formal non-agricultural sector. “That decrease is in manufacturing, construction, community services, transport… only mining and quarrying showed some increases in terms of employment,” Lehohla said.

Compared to the same quarter in 2016, employment has increased year-on-year by 13 000 [0.1%]. – ANA