One in four give up on safety measures

MORE than a quarter of South Africans said they took almost no measures against crime because they felt there was nothing they could do against it.

This dismal outlook was recorded in the latest Victims of Crimes (VOC) report compiled and released by Statistics SA (Stats SA) yesterday.

The release presented a selection of key findings from the Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey conducted from April 2018 to March 2019.

The statisticians based their findings on surveys conducted at 27000 households in the country. It found that between 2017/18 and 2018/19 the hijacking of motor vehicles increased, while home robbery had decreased.

Street robberies increased significantly. Housebreaking, theft of motor vehicles, murder and consumer fraud all increased.

Deliberate damaging, burning or destruction of residential dwellings and theft of personal property increased significantly.

Assault and sexual offences both decreased slightly, the report recorded.

Between April 2018 and March 2019 an estimated 1.34 million incidents of housebreaking occurred, affecting almost 970000 households.

An estimated 264 000 home robberies occurred, affecting 180000 households, while theft of motor vehicles was experienced by over 68 000 households in a total of 82867 incidents.

About 31% of adults aged 16 and older had taken various physical protection measures, such as installing burglar doors; 21% resolved to walk only during safe hours, 18% decided to be more alert to their surroundings and to use safer routes, 13% resolved not to walk alone and 7% procured the services of private security.

However, 62% of adults aged 16 and older did not take any action to protect themselves from crime. The study found 27% of them felt that nothing could be done, 22% thought crime-fighting was the work of the police, 19% didn’t know what to do, 17% took no action because of lack of money, 10% felt their action would not make any difference, and 4% were still considering what action to take.

On the safety of women, the report also found that men in general felt safer walking alone in their neighbourhood than women did.

In KwaZulu-Natal, almost 290000 housebreaking incidents were recorded in the last year, but only 38 790 reported the crime to the police.

Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies said the “huge discrepancy” between the statistics compiled in the report and SAPS’ crime stats was worrying.

“This is a very crucial difference that we need more information on. Why is this happening? Why are people falling victim to crime, but not reporting it to the police?”

He said the police needed to make greater use of the report, and not only depend on their crime statistics.

“Their statistics are only based on reported cases. Until we remove crime statistics as a performance indicator for police, we’ll continue to get fewer recorded incidents.

“We found that higher-income areas have more reported cases, as they’re more likely to have their houses and household goods insured.

“So for insurance purposes, they have to report to the police. In turn, the police send their resources to those areas, thinking they’re crime hot spots, but it’s probably lower-income households that experience more crime.”