Question NW2339 to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
18 November 2016 - NW2339
Horn, Mr W to ask the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services
What are the detailed reasons for the decline in the (a) conviction and (b) sentencing rates of cases of (i) organised and (ii) house robbery crimes in the National Prosecuting Authority’s 2015-16 annual report, which do not comport with a decline in national crime rates?
Reply:
Regarding the Organised crime
The organised crime statistics reflected relate to those cases within the ambit of the Organised Crime component. The NPA does not intend to measure the crime but rather the effectiveness and performance of the components dealing with the more serious and complicated cases of organised crime. The focus of this component includes:
- Bank robberies, cash-in-transit heists, car and truck hijacking; business robberies, syndicate house robberies and ATM attacks;
- Trafficking in Precious Metals, and Diamonds;
- Non- Ferrous metals; (SEC 3 OF ACT 18 OF 2015 - Offence relating to essential infrastructure)
- Endangered species;
- Drug trafficking;
- Human Trafficking;
- Gang related matters under POCA;
- Racketeering and money laundering offences;
- Any other investigations referred to OCIU by SAPS management
Regarding the House Robberies
Investigations on house robberies, similar to most other serious crimes, take some time to finalise and then also take quite a substantial time to be finalised once the trial has started. On average, these cases last between 12 to 24 months to be finalised. If there is an increase of these cases during the 2016/17 financial year, this will only reflect from the following year in the court performance data. NPA performance on house robberies finalised during 2015/16 was in line with the trend by the SAPS as reflected during their 2014/15 financial year, which has in fact shown a decline for the previous three successive years. The following is an extract from the SAPS Annual Report information for 2014/15:
15 |
Comparison 2013-2014 with 2014-2015 |
|||||||||||||
Province |
April 2005 |
April 2006 |
April 2007 |
April 2008 |
April 2009 |
April 2010 |
April 2011 |
April 2012 |
April 2013 |
April 2014 |
Case |
% Change |
% |
|
1 |
Gauteng |
74990 |
67643 |
63559 |
68961 |
74429 |
70447 |
64475 |
68296 |
67988 |
66172 |
-1816 |
-2,7% |
26,1% |
2 |
Western Cape |
40837 |
43011 |
42239 |
42792 |
43171 |
43685 |
44494 |
49509 |
50503 |
47783 |
-2720 |
-5,4% |
18,8% |
3 |
KwaZulu-Natal |
40631 |
39486 |
36898 |
37515 |
40231 |
39439 |
41010 |
45404 |
43969 |
43274 |
-695 |
-1,6% |
17,1% |
4 |
Eastern Cape |
32978 |
31421 |
29346 |
28380 |
28233 |
27086 |
26825 |
25782 |
24643 |
24329 |
-314 |
-1,3% |
9,6% |
5 |
Mpumalanga |
20305 |
19444 |
18785 |
19766 |
19206 |
18026 |
18117 |
18777 |
18489 |
18183 |
-306 |
-1,7% |
7,2% |
6 |
Limpopo |
12768 |
12346 |
11790 |
12332 |
13936 |
13376 |
15225 |
14851 |
16477 |
16466 |
-11 |
-0,1% |
6,5% |
7 |
North West |
15463 |
13684 |
13576 |
14277 |
14859 |
14740 |
14569 |
15705 |
15388 |
15687 |
299 |
1,9% |
6,2% |
8 |
Free State |
17353 |
15939 |
15545 |
16040 |
15682 |
14828 |
15101 |
17284 |
16314 |
15618 |
-696 |
-4,3% |
6,2% |
9 |
Northern Cape |
6078 |
5488 |
4900 |
5402 |
5531 |
4985 |
4851 |
5711 |
6013 |
6204 |
191 |
3,2% |
2,4% |
South Africa |
261402 |
248462 |
236638 |
245465 |
255278 |
246612 |
244667 |
261319 |
259784 |
253716 |
-6068 |
-2,3% |