Murder and rape are down, but hijackings and housebreaking are up. These are among the statistics the public is not allowed to know
Paul Kirk
The Mail & Guardian has obtained restricted official police crime statistics for the Durban North policing area.
Police say this huge area is indicative of the country as a whole. It includes some of the worst crime spots in the province KwaMashu and Inanda as well as the affluent areas of LaLucia and Umhlanga, where the Oppenheimers have a holi-day home.
In terms of a directive by the national commissioner of police and the minister of safety and security the media are not supposed to have access to these statistics.
The statistics come from a report for February this year compiled by the Crime Information Analysis Centre at provincial police headquarters.
The good news is that rape is down 22% to 127 cases from a monstrous 163 recorded in February last year. Murder is down by a massive 35% to 56 cases in February this year as opposed to 86 cases a year earlier.
Attempted murders are up 14% to 95 as opposed to 83 last year.
The statistics reveal that the area has seen a 16% increase in car hijackings with 57 reported occurring in February this year as opposed to 49 for the same month last year.
Thefts from cars labelled ”thefts out of motor vehicle” by police are also on the increase, with 890 cases reported in February this year as opposed to 834 for the same period last year a 7% rise.
Truck hijackings are also on the increase, with 17 trucks being stolen in February 2001. The possible reason for the 9% increase from last year is a note in the police statistics saying this ”is an organised crime issue”.
Cars are also being stolen more frequently with car thefts up 12% from 508 to 567 cases in February this year.
Stock theft is up by a whopping 71%. This is off a very low base of seven cases in February last year. This February, 12 cases were reported.
Housebreakings are down by 6%, though 702 cases were reported in February as opposed to 744 for the same period last year. The reason for this may simply be that criminals are now breaking into business premises instead. ”Housebreaking: Business” is up by 16% to 322 cases from 278 for February last year.
Assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm is down 12% to 515 cases as opposed to 582 the year before.
Robbery is up by 19% to 348 cases compared to 293 the year before.
However, the next category suggests the police may be attempting to massage crime statistics to lower the incidence of armed robbery. Armed robbery is down by 4% to 416 cases as opposed to 432 cases in February last year.
However, the police documents stipulate that the crime must be committed with a firearm to be included as an armed robbery. The traditional definition of armed robbery is a robbery with the use of a weapon any weapon, from a brick to a knife to a rocket launcher.
National commissioner of police representative Sally de Beer, said the statistics might or might not be accurate as the police were in the process of improving their recording of crime statistics. She declined to comment on the specifics of any of the figures.
@Moratorium hurts police
Jaspreet Kindra
An inquiry instituted by former safety and security minister Sydney Mufamadi into the collection, processing and publication of crime statistics in 1998 had found that denying public access to crime statistics decreases the legitimacy of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
This emerged in papers filed by Antoinette Louw, head of the Crime and Justice Programme at the Institute for Security Studies, in the Cape High Court.
Louw is supporting the legal action instituted by Independent Newspapers against the minister of safety and security and the provincial commissioner of police to have the moratorium on the release of crime statistics lifted.
The moratorium was put into place last year on the grounds that police statistics were unreliable and inaccurate. Independent Newspapers’s legal action was instituted in February this year.
Louw said the inquiry had at ”no stage” found that the problems of data accuracy were to be of ”such an extent that a moratorium on the release of crime statistics to the public was necessary”.
She said the lack of statistics has hampered the work of organisations such as her programme which works with the government and civil society in ”understanding crime and its reduction”.
She pointed out that they had been unable to evaluate the success of Operation Crackdown the police’s crime combating plan that started in May 2000.
In another affidavit filed in the high court, Alison Tilley, project manager for the Open Democracy Advice Centre (Odac), described the moratorium as both ”unnecessary and unconstitutional”.
Odac is an association between the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the Black Sash Trust and the department of public law of the University of Cape Town.