Stats SA sees drop in housebreaking, car theft and murder

A Stats SA survey asserts lockdown restrictions led to a drop in certain crimes, including housebreakings, car theft and murder, between April 2020 and March 2021 versus the previous year.

But the same strict rules, including curfews and travel bans, affected the methodology behind Stats SA’s latest governance, public safety and justice survey published on Thursday.    

Usually Stats SA’s sample size for this survey is about 30,000 households across nine provinces. The most recent data is based on telephonic interviews with less than one-third of that sample: about 9,000 households.

Still, the chief director of Stats SA’s social statistics, Solly Molayi, insists the findings are credible. “We had to adjust in terms of our surveys, but also bear in mind that we are producing estimates,” he said.

Of the 30,000 households previously surveyed, Stats SA had contact details for 18,000 of them. Using these, it surveyed 9,000 respondents. Molayi said a scientific process of bias adjustment was run after the latest interviews, and this approach drew on previous surveys’ data. “If you recall, it was the period when we were under level five,”  he said.

Fewer SA households were hit by crimes including consumer fraud, hijackings, street robberies and personal property thefts. Of all the crimes polled, hijackings dropped most dramatically by 45% in Stats SA’s survey year on year. An estimated 151,000 households were affected.

Gauteng had the highest tally of housebreakings at 238,000. It affected about 4.5% of households in the province. The Western Cape had the highest percentage of housebreakings relative to total households at 6.7%. 

The survey records an estimated 83,000 car thefts and 64,000 hijackings. Stats SA estimates there were 11,000 murders in 2020/2-21, a drop of 19% compared with the previous year. 

In terms of personal safety, two-thirds of adults were afraid of walking in their neighbourhoods at night, whereas 85% feel safe walking alone in the same areas during the day. People in rural areas feel safer walking alone after dark, in comparison with urban dwellers.

The overwhelming majority of women (87.3%) and men (88.3%) told Stats SA they believed a spouse or intimate partner was most likely to commit crimes of gender-based violence (GBV).

Stats SA identified a link between age and personal property threat: those aged 16 and 34 were most affected out of 2.1-million adult victims.

“We went through a thorough assessment of the data, just to make sure that it is fit for purpose,” Maloyi said. While the latest report includes disclaimers for “lower level” data, he was confident in the national figures. Some crimes, including GBV offences, had limited sample sizes.

batese@businesslive.co.za