Shoplifting, commercial crime, burglaries and vehicle theft were behind a spike in national crime levels over the last seven years.
This is according to a report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) on crime statistics by the South African Police Service in September.
Between 1994/95 and 2001/2003 murder, attempted murder and aggravated assaults each peaked at 30 000 cases a year, but ISS researchers Johan Burger, Chandré Gould and Gareth Newham said in the last seven years crime levels were driven by an increase in property-related crimes such as shoplifting, commercial crime, burglaries and theft from motor vehicles since 2002.
Shoplifting increased by 32 percent, or 21 642 cases, commercial crime by 19 556 cases, residential burglary by 18 724 cases while theft from motor vehicles increased by 9 201 cases.
This happened in a period during which the police budget increased by nearly R30-billion. In 2003 the budget for the police was R22,7bn with a police force of 134 857 people, while in the last financial year a police force of about 201 000 had a budget of R52,6bn.
More than 60 000 additional police personnel were recruited between 2002 and 2010.
However, Burger and Gould said the latest crime statistics were not all bad news as far as violent crime was concerned.
Attempted murder went down from 26 801 cases in 1994/95 to 17 410 in 2009/10. The figure had peaked at 35 861 in 2002/03. The number of murders went down from 21 553 cases to 16 834 between 2002/03 and 2009/10.
“The decrease of 7,2 percent in the absolute number of murders in the past year is the third largest year-on-year decline since 1995.
“One of the factors contributing to the decline in murders may be the 6,3 percent decrease in the number of aggravated robberies.
“Since almost 16 percent of murders in South Africa occur as a result of robbery, the decrease in aggravated robberies may have contributed to the decline in murders.
“There was at least no dramatic increase in the absolute number of cases of house and business robberies over the past year, and most of the violent interpersonal crimes such as murder, attempted murder, sexual crimes and assault are either decreasing or have stabilised,” the researchers said in the report.
They said 65 percent of murders were associated with behaviour such as drug and alcohol abuse and only 16 percent happened as a consequence of other crime, such as robbery.
“Policing can have little or no effect on these kinds of crimes.”
The researchers said latest statistics suggest that what the police call trio crimes - car hijacking, business robbery and house robbery - may have stabilised after a substantial year-on-year increase since 2003/04. In the 2009/10 period vehicle hijacking decreased by 6,8 percent at a national level.
House robbery, which increased by 100 percent since 2003/04, has also stabilised for the first time in five years, with a 1,9 percent increase in 2009/10, while business robbery increased by 295,3 percent between 2003/04 and 2009/10. - The Mercury