EDITORIAL: SA still hostage to violent crime
Crime numbers reveal just how little confidence citizens have in the police — and that raises questions about under-reporting
Two sets of crime numbers released in recent weeks reveal just how unsafe South Africans feel, even though the number of violent crimes has supposedly fallen. They reveal, too, just how little confidence citizens have in the police — and that in turn calls into question the extent to which our crime statistics might be under-reporting reality. At least we now have more regular reporting from the South African Police Service (SAPS), after the government announced in June 2016 that police crime statistics would be released every quarter, to allow for swifter responses to changing trends. The latest SAPS numbers, released on Friday, cover the period from April to December 2016, providing a view of crime drawn from reports to the police. The latest Victims of Crime survey released by Stats SA in February complements that with a bottom-up view drawn from household surveys. Superficially, the SAPS crime stats seem to be good news. The number of contact crimes in April-December was down al...
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