{"id":105773,"date":"2015-12-01T10:37:54","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T08:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=105773"},"modified":"2015-12-01T10:37:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T08:37:54","slug":"9-reasons-why-south-africans-dont-trust-the-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/105773\/9-reasons-why-south-africans-dont-trust-the-police\/","title":{"rendered":"9 reasons why South Africans don’t trust the police"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report released by Statistics SA shows that South Africans simply do not feel safe in the country – and there is little faith in the SAPS to combat rising crime levels.<\/p>\n

The Victims of Crime Survey for 2014\/2015 looked at private households from all nine provinces in South Africa, and provides information about the dynamics of crime from the perspective of these households and victims of crime.<\/p>\n

It also gauges public perceptions on the police service, prosecutors, courts and correctional services in the country.<\/p>\n

The data complements the recently-released crime data from the SAPS in September, which showed that overall crime levels in the country have increased since 2014.<\/p>\n

A total of 2.206 million crimes were committed over the period, up marginally \u2013 0.09% \u2013 from the 2.204 million reported in 2014.<\/p>\n

According to the Victims of Crime Survey, South Africans’ experiences have been similar, with citizens reporting a feeling that the crime situation in the country is worse – particularly house-breakings and home robberies.<\/p>\n

The increase in crime has lead to an increase in fear among citizens, which has hindered their ability to engage in day-to-day activities, such as going to the park, or simply walking in the streets.<\/p>\n

About 68.9% of households felt unsafe when it is dark – a noticeable declining trend observed from 2011 to 2014\/15.<\/p>\n

More than a third of households (36.9%) were prevented from going to open spaces or parks when alone because of fear of crime, while 18.4% of households could not allow their children to walk to school unaccompanied by an adult.<\/p>\n

Because of fear of crime, households in the country took measures to protect themselves. About 51.6% of households took physical protection measures for their homes, while more than 29% of households took physical protection measures for their vehicles.<\/p>\n

No faith in Criminal Justice System<\/h3>\n

There is a prevalence of under-reporting crime incidents to the SAPS in the country, which remains a major concern, Stats SA said.<\/p>\n

Households\u2019 satisfaction with the way the police and courts dealt with the criminal matters decreased between 2011 and 2014\/15; about 57.0% of households were satisfied with the police in their area and 54.4% were satisfied with how the courts were performing.<\/p>\n

Most households who do not report crime, provide the following reasons: \u2018police could do nothing\u2019 and \u2018police won\u2019t do anything about it\u2019.<\/p>\n

Alarmingly, victims of sexual offences cited the crime as being “not serious enough” as reason for not reporting it to the police.<\/p>\n

Crime categories that were more likely to be reported to the police were murder (95.7%), car theft (88.9%), car hijacking (85.8%) and sexual offences (63.0%).<\/p>\n

In general, property related crimes, such as housebreaking\/burglary (51.8%), theft of personal property (34.2%) and theft of livestock (32.3%) were less likely to be reported to the police as compared to contact-related crimes.<\/p>\n

Police satisfaction among citizens has consistently decreased since 2011, from 64.7% to 57.0% in 2014\/15.<\/p>\n

In 2014\/15, households headed by the white population group (65.9%) had the highest level of satisfaction, followed by black African headed households (56.3%).<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/a>

Police satisfaction rate<\/p><\/div>\n

When asked why they were not satisfied with the police service, households cited these nine main reasons most frequently:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Police do not respond on time – 79.8%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Police are lazy – 58.6%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. The stolen goods are never recovered – 51.0%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Police are corrupt – 48.0%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. The police release criminals too early – 47.1%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. The police do not come into the area – 45.1%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. Police are cooperating with criminals – 39.1%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  8. There are not enough police resources – 33.6%<\/strong><\/li>\n
  9. Police are harsh towards victims – 32.4<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    More on Crime<\/h3>\n

    2015 crime stats for South Africa: everything you need to know<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Most South Africans don\u2019t feel safe<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    The worst crime hot spots in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A new report released by Statistics SA shows that South Africans simply do not feel safe in the country – and there is little faith in the SAPS to combat rising crime levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":93308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1910,26],"class_list":["post-105773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-crime","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105773"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105787,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105773\/revisions\/105787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}