Police statistics for Grahamstown suggest that we are living in a significantly safer environment than last year with several key indicators showing an encouraging decline in crime.
Police statistics for Grahamstown suggest that we are living in a significantly safer environment than last year with several key indicators showing an encouraging decline in crime.
Police research for the whole country released yesterday states that there has been a large drop of several types of violent crime including attempted murder, assault and robbery in Grahamstown.
Comparing 2011/2012 with 2012/2013, it is notable that the incidence of attempted murder has dropped from 24 to 18 cases; assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm dropped from 679 to 650; common assault fell from 588 to 493 and common robbery dropped from 159 to 114 incidents.
There are also significant drops in what the police describe as ‘property related crimes’. Burglary at residential premises has fallen from 1 123 last year to 916 in the year ending in March 2013.
Theft of motor vehicles and motorcycles dropped from 58 to 48 and theft out of or from motor vehicles registered a massive drop from 589 to 371.
While these improvements are of course welcome, it still means that at least one vehicle is stolen every week and one car is broken into every day.
It also means that between two and three houses are broken into every day of the year.
The most serious crimes – murder and sexual crimes – have shown almost no improvement at all over the last nine years.
The figures in these two categories have remained roughly constant since the April 2003/March 2004 year with 33 murders and 193 sexual crimes recorded in the most recent year.
It is troubling that the two categories registering the biggest year-on-year increases are drug- and alcohol-related crimes. The number of drug-related crimes increased from 93 to 127 incidents in only one year, while the number of cases of driving under the influence of alcohol increased from 107 to 127.
These statistics are of course dependent on the capacity and credibility of the South African Police Services.
It would be useful to have an assessment of the SAPS ability and commitment to keeping accurate stats. There are self-evident reasons why local police commanders might want to show improvements in their crime control stats, therefore some commentators have questioned the reliability of these statistics.
We would also like to read some research into the proportion of crimes committed compared to the number reported. It is a well established fact that only a small proportion of crimes committed are reported to the police.
It is interesting to note that Grahamstown figures are not locked in synch with national statistics. For example, nationally, the murder, attempted murder and sexual crimes have increased significantly.
In next week’s edition of Grocott’s Mail we will do a detailed analysis of all the crime stats released for the Makana municipal area.
