Theft tops overall crime figures

Pini Bothoko | Thursday March 9, 2017 15:43

 

A crime statistics report released on Tuesday showed that theft and related offences accounted for nearly a fifth of all offences in 2013.

Other leading offences included dangerous and negligent acts at 12%, road and traffic offences at 10% followed by attempts or threats to murder, assaults, harassments and related offences all at nine percent.

“Theft and related offences include theft or taking of vehicles and related offences, theft but excluding of vehicles and handling of stolen property,” reads the report. According to the same report, sexual offences decreased by seven percent in 2013, continuing on from a reduction of 1.8% in 2012.

The report explains that sexual offences include a variety of criminal acts, ranging from sexual threats to unwanted contact rape.

“These acts were perpetrated by male offenders against females,” states the report. The report showed that homicide, which included murder, infanticide and manslaughter, contributed 3.7% to the overall number of offences committed in 2012, before rising to four percent in 2013. 

The findings show that robbery, which also includes extortion and hijacking offences, was estimated at six percent both in 2012 and 2013.

On the one hand, burglary offences declined to four percent of total offences in 2013, from five percent in 2012.  A burglary is when a theft occurs in a dwelling or structure that may or may not be inhabited at the time of the crime.

The data also indicates that the majority of the accused were concentrated within the population age groups of 20-39 and this pattern has been dominant over the years.

The incidence of crime according to age, shows a trend of rising crime steadily moving up from the 20-24 age group, reaching a peak among those aged 30-34 before decreasing with age.

According to the report, suspects who appeared for hearing on homicide, which includes murder, infanticide and manslaughter, were concentrated within the  25-29 up to 35-39 age groups for both 2012 and 2013.

The report also showed that even though those aged 65 and above did not generally partake much in criminal activities, especially when compared to those younger than them, they however did often engage in offences that did not involve physical strength such as controlled drug offences, fraud, forgery and false instrument offences.