The Human Science Research Council (HSRC) says there’s more evidence now that the number of car hijackings in South Africa is much higher than it has ever been.
The HSRC study found that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cars being hijacked in the last year.
At the same time, the study also discovered that only 27% of people trust the police to get some kind of justice, while over 40% say if they catch a criminal suspect, they will not hand that person over to the police because it won’t lead to justice.
Senior research specialist in the Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division, Dr Steven Gordon says they believe a car is hijacked every 22 minutes in the country.
Gordon says, “The situation is slightly more dire when we conducted our survey, we found that 47%, almost half of the SA adult population agreed with the statement that its pointless to handover a suspect to the police because they will not bring the offender to justice. Forty-five percent of the people now think it’s okay to take the law into their own hands.”
“People feel police are not efficient at their jobs in reducing the level of crime. If we saw meaningful improvement and the efficiency of the police, you would see a level of trust. So there needs to be a greater amount of attention played to the impartiality of which the police treat the general public.”
