“It is also the time that we as a country must start a frank and open discussion about alcohol and the real effect it has on society. The evidence is clear from these figures that the absence of alcohol leads to safer societies,” Cele argues.
Burglary of non-residential properties went up during the same period with 9.1%. According to the statistics, 2 692 educational facilities were broken into and 1 246 liquor outlets or shops were broken into.
“Some were organised and some were spontaneous because there are people that have been arrested as groups. And the fact that even the stolen goods would have been kept somewhere by not the people that stole it like your kitchen equipment, like your fridge and stoves. So it was a combination of organised criminality and spontaneous individual. People that would have been there.”
Cele says they acknowledge that the circumstances that led to the decline in numbers were extraordinary and the combination of high police visibility, the ban on the sale of alcohol and people staying at home, created the circumstances for the low crime rates.
“You saw in the presentation that as we go to low lockdown we go to the higher in terms of crimes committed. We expect crime to increase and we have our lessons how we deal with those issues of crime increase.”
He says the lessons learned during this period will be used to inform future crime-fighting initiatives.