SA's murder rate drops 6.5%
2011-09-08 11:22
On crimestats
Pretoria - South Africa's murder rate dropped by 6.5% to 15 940 murders in 2010/11, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said on Thursday.
"It is perhaps worth mentioning that during the 1994/95 period our murder ratio as a country stood at 27 000," he said in Pretoria on the release of the annual crime statistics.
The figures were drawn from April 2010 to March 2011.
"Murder is one of the most reliable forms of crime statistics," the minister said.
Attempted murder decreased by 12.2%.
Sexual offences
Though there was a decrease in sexual offences by three percent, Mthethwa said this was "an area that still required focused attention".
"We are mainly concerned about the number of rapes that occur in the country... the number of reported cases of rapes still remains unacceptably high," he said.
The number of rape cases reported rose from 55 097 to 56 272.
Mthethwa said rape, based on international trends, was often under-reported.
During the period under review, 94 police officers were killed in the line of duty. This was down from the previous year's figure of 110 police killed.
Assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm dropped by 4.5%, while robbery with aggravating circumstances was down by 12%.
Robberies down
Two years ago, house robberies had increased dramatically and last year, it showed signs of stabilising, Mthethwa said.
This crime declined by 10% to 16 889 cases during the 2010/11 financial year - the first decrease since 2004,
"Our engagement with the insurance industry reflects that they too have started to witness the impact of this decline," the minister said.
"According to the SA Insurance Crime Bureau, different insurance companies are experiencing decline in the range of between 4% and 31%."
Car hijackings were down to their lowest level since 2003/04, after a steady increase in the past three years. This crime had now dropped by 23.6% to 10 700 cases.
Truck hijackings decreased 29.2% with 413 reported cases.
After a 2.7% increase in the previous year, the number of burglaries at residential premises had now dropped 4.8%.
However, there was an increase in non-residential robberies of 0.9%, particularly among small businesses like spaza shops, supermarkets and schools.
ATM bombings soar 61%
Cash-in-transit crimes were down 18.7% and bank robberies declined by 58%.
A decrease in these two categories of crimes was, however, leading to an increase in ATM blasts, which increased significantly by 61.5% to 399 cases.
The majority of the bombings, 57.1%, took place in Gauteng, followed by the North West at 12.4%.
There had also been a substantial increase of 10.2% in drug-related crimes, which had become a long-term trend with drug-related crimes doubling in the last eight to nine years.
Cases of drunken driving or driving under the influence of drugs were up by 4.5%.
Commercial crime rose 2.8%. This was increasingly dominated by cyber-crime.
- SAPA
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