The government was on Sunday beating the drum of success in its fight against crime at a post-state-of-the-nation address briefing by the justice, crime prevention and security cluster in Pretoria.
The cluster’s chairman, Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, said there violent crimes were down and arrests of corrupt officials were up.
He also revealed the results of a Crime Victim Survey that paints an apparent rosy picture on the perception of crime.
“We are definitely seeing results. Our performance between the 2009/10 and 2010/11 financial years show an overall decrease in serious crime levels by 5 percent.
“For the first time in eight years the murder rate dropped by 6.5 percent, attempted murder by 12.2 percent and sexual offences decreased by 4.4 percent.
“These decreases were achieved through various interventions, including proper planning, police visibility and co-ordination with other security agencies,” he said.
While there had been decreases, the increase in rape cases was still a concern. “To counter this, we have reintroduced the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences units with a special focus on crimes prevalent among vulnerable groups,” he said.
On the fight against organised crime, Radebe said the Hawks had identified, tracked and arrested 50 of the country’s most wanted criminals, including the recent arrest of 20 alleged rhino poachers.
“The cabinet has approved an additional R150 million from the Criminal Assets Recovery Account for the Anti-Corruption Task Team, made up of the Hawks, Special Investigating Unit and the National Prosecuting Authority, he said.
“We have set ourselves the target of arresting and prosecuting 100 people suspected of serious corruption with more than R5 million in illicit assets by 2014.
“So far 56 people are being investigated, 29 have been arrested and 19 have assets to the value of R579 million frozen,” he said.
Adding to the successes was the continued improvement in the finalisation rate of court cases.
“Although slightly behind our targets, between April and December we finalised 327 818 cases.
“The high court conviction rate was 84.4 percent (752 cases); the regional courts conviction rate 74.2 percent (21 886 cases) and district court conviction rate 90.5 percent (185 884 cases).
“The case backlog has also been reduced to its lowest point in five years of 32 902 cases (15.9 percent).
“Between April and December the courts removed 16 436 cases from the roll. Between April 2009 and December last year, 40 298 cases were removed from court rolls as a result of additional regional and district courts,” he said.
In the fight against corruption in the cluster, Radebe said 192 officials were charged with corruption and 86 convicted, while 296 were charged departmentally for misconduct.
Radebe said the Crime Victims Survey, Radebe showed that 40 percent of households felt that violent and non-violent crime had decreased in areas where they lived, with 60 percent satisfied with the work done by police and the courts. The poll also showed 32.1 percent of households felt crime had increased compared to the 2007 survey where 57.1 percent felt it had increased. - Pretoria News