Johannesburg - The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) on Wednesday predicted an increase in crime rates when statistics are released by the police minister later this month.
“We expect to see a spike in the murder rate and armed robbery statistics…,” SAIRR director Frans Cronje said at a media briefing in Johannesburg.
Cronje said this was due to the country not having enough police officers.
“Even if we had high quality policing but they wouldn’t be able to deal with our murder cases because of the load,” he said.
Cronje said the crime trends showed that better strategies from police management were needed.
He said between the 1994/95 and 2013/14 financial years, former national police commissioner Bheki Cele had the best record in terms of bringing down armed robberies when compared to other commissioners.
“In early years we saw that the commissioners weren’t successful but armed robbery levels dropped during Bheki Cele’s era,” Cronje said.
Cronje said during Cele’s successor Riah Phiyega’s era the same crimes had gone up again.
ANA