The Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention on Wednesday launched an online tool that provides accessible data on crime trends in the country.
The crime and victimisation monitoring tool will combine victim data and police statistics on crime to paint a better picture of crime trends in South Africa, the centre’s research director, Patrick Burton, said in Pretoria.
”The mapping tool will bring together all available public data on which trends can be mapped and easily be identified over a period of time,” he said.
So far, the website offers only a breakdown of crime trends in two categories — murder and housebreaking. The data was also not analysed, only pre-packaged.
”The intention of later analysing the data is there, but we want people to analyse the information themselves and, in due time, we will know which crime categories to add on to the website,” said Burton.
The tool can be found on the centre’s website.
Last week, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said his department was looking at the viability of reporting crime trends to communities.
”We don’t need to rely on annual crime statistics only; we need to report regular crime trends to communities,” he told a media briefing in Pretoria.
”What we are envisaging is a process where members of the SA Police Service, on a very regular basis, will go to the communities and give a full report on the crime trends in the given areas …”
The minister was briefing members of the media after discussions between the Big Business Working Group and President Thabo Mbeki. His spokesperson Trevor Bloem said the trend reports were not to be confused with the annual release of national crime statistics.
”This should not be confused with the annual crime statistics, which are national and audited through a scientific validation process. This is to do with crime information occurring at station level,” Bloem said. — Sapa