DA questions crime stats

2008-06-30 17:10

Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance has questioned the accuracy of the latest crime statistics released on Monday, saying decreases in certain categories could be due to under-reporting.

"The DA is treating the latest release of crime statistics with the deepest scepticism," DA spokesperson Dianne Kohler-Barnard said.

"While it looks as if crime is decreasing, it may be the case that fewer people are reporting crimes.

"The question that we need to ask is how many South Africans bother to report crimes to the police anymore?" she said.

The latest statistics showed decreases in many categories, which the DA welcomed, if they represented decreases in crime and not in reporting rates.

Leadership

"The DA believes that we can achieve a significant reduction in crime if the necessary leadership and proper policies are in place.

"Unfortunately both are glaringly absent at present, as is typified by the current situation in which National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi has been placed on leave with full pay while his court case drags on," Kohler-Barnard said.

South Africa needed to move beyond discussions of incremental changes in crime statistics and instead achieve a massive and sustained drop in the overall level of crime.

Despite repeated calls for integrated crime statistics, there was still no indication of how many reported crimes led to arrests, court appearances and convictions.

Over 50% don't report crimeUp to

All the current figures did was show how many people had reported crimes, which excluded all the disillusioned people who no longer did so.

According to available figures, as many as 51% of victims did not report serious crimes such as robbery and only 49% felt that the police were doing a good job.

"How much of the declining crime stats are due to real decreases in crime? We can only guess," she said.

Furthermore, the police could not continue to hide behind the trend that a high number of victims and perpetrators knew each other.

"If the victims knew their perpetrators, why such a low rate of arrest?"

For the 2006/07 period, less than 40% of contact crime cases made it to a first court appearance.

For the crime figures to mean anything, they had to be integrated with arrest and conviction statistics, Kohler-Barnard said.

- SAPA