Aggravated Robbery Provinces By Ranking
Aggravated robbery is a specific type of crime within the larger category of theft. This kind of crime appears in the codes of various legal systems around the world. Each country has its own ways of dealing with different kinds of theft, and its own definitions for types of theft. In most uses of the term aggravated robbery, specific requirements apply to labelling a crime as this type of theft by force. The prescribed minimum sentences range from 15-25 years in South Africa. The list below list the statistics of reported aggravated robberies per province by ranking.
Gauteng 42 535 cases reported
Despite the new crime fighting strategy that was put into place in 2008, the rate of aggravated robberies has not gone down. On the contrary, it has gone up. The strategy in partnership between Gauteng law enforcement agencies, Business Against Crime, as well as the banking sector set out to make Gauteng a safe place by allocating surveillance cameras being placed in areas with a high crime rate, improving the response time of police, deploying an anti-truck hijacking unit on all national and provincial roads within the province and increasing the number of police patrolling areas would increase from 3 000 to 10 000.
Kwa-Zulu Natal 20 561cases reported
Aggravated robbery together with murder and common robber have had Durban rated the riskiest province to live in. Many have concluded that these statistics were a result of ineffective law enforcements. Due to the alarming rate at which crime has gone up in KZN, opposition parties have urged the government to take control of the crime situation which seems to be getting out of hand.
Western Cape 19 255 cases reported
The Western Cape is the only other province with a rate higher than the national average, with 293 robberies per 100 000 of the population. Western Cape and Gauteng have been identified as the provinces which require particular attention and additional resources to address priority contact crimes such as murder and aggravated robbery. One of the main reasons is that there are disturbing shortages of detectives, crime prevention personnel, and support staff and to a lesser extent vehicles.
Eastern Cape 13 167 cases reported
Eastern Cape has had the highest statistics of murder for five years. Amongst other crimes that have had an increase aggravated robbery seems to have gone up too. In a recent news report, German tourists were robbed at a bed and breakfast at gun point. They entered the house through the sliding door. The tourists ran and locked themselves in the bath room while the robbers helped themselves to their belongings.
Although other provinces aren’t as affected as the major cities in south Africa, there areas till cases of aggravated robbery reported in police stations nationwide. Provinces with more rural areas and smaller towns have more murder rates as compared to aggravated crimes. Although these cases are reported, they are not often big enough cases to be reported in the news. The furthest they go where news reports are concerned is being reported in the local news papers. The statistics of aggravated robberies in the North West, Free State, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape are as follows:
North West 5 427 cases reported
Free State 5 358 cases reported
Limpopo 5 335 cases reported
Mpumalanga 5 284 cases reported
Northern Cape 1 405 cases reported
