February 19th, local time, the South African Police Department released the crime rate statistics for the fourth quarter of 2020.
Compared with the same period in previous years, the crime rate in South Africa has changed greatly due to the epidemic.
According to South African Police, there were 459,518 crimes in South Africa between October and December 2020, up 16.5 percent compared with 394,398 cases between June and September 2020.
But compared with the same period in 2019, the crime rate has decreased by 9.1%.
Although the crime rate has decreased, murders have increased by 6.6%, with a total of 6,283 deaths from violent crimes between October and December 2020, which is equivalent to one person dying every 20 minutes from violent crimes.
South African police said that the criminal activity in 2020 was biased towards economic crime compared with 2019.
Among them, cash and cash truck robbery increased by 66.7% and truck hijacking cases increased by 34.2%, in contrast to the decline in sexual violence crimes the most, with a decrease of 39.8%.
