Last year, the BBC compared the crimes stats in South Africa to those of actual war zones.

It was not a proud day for the country.

This year, we aren’t doing much better, and the most recent stats have revealed a rise in serious crimes like murder, robbery, and sexual offences.

Hijacking falls under the banner of ‘robbery’ and, unfortunately, can also involve murder depending on what goes down in one of the many hijacking hotspots situated across the country.

MyBroadband says the situation is so bad that our prisons are struggling to cope:

So significant is the spike in crime in South Africa in recent years that local prisons have run out of space.

The Department of Correctional Services said there are 162,875 inmates in South African prisons, with only 118,572 beds to house them.

To resolve this problem, the Department of Correctional Services wants fewer criminals to be sent to jail.

The Police Service, however, does not support this plan and wants criminals to serve longer sentences.

That situation would be so much worse if our law enforcement agencies were actually securing convictions, but sadly, we are really dropping the ball on that front.

In fact, the stats make for frightening reading:

…law enforcement in the country has basically collapsed, with conviction rates for serious crime as low as 2% in some cases.

The poor arrest and prosecution rate is particularly prevalent with serious crimes like highjackings, robberies, and murders.

According to the report, only 2.3% of  16,026 car hijackings made it to court and resulted in a guilty verdict.

The situation for house robberies was equally poor, where only 4.6% of criminals were arrested and successfully prosecuted.

The success rate for business robberies was even worse, with only 3.6% of the criminals landing up in court and only 3% of them ultimately being found guilty.

2,3% of hijackings made it court and resulted in a conviction. It’s no wonder that these crooks operate with such impunity.

In addition, only 20% of murderers went to court and only 9% of sexual offenders were prosecuted. That means that 80% of murderers weren’t tried and a staggering 91% of people accused of a sexually motivated crime were found to be “innocent”.

These stats are not outliers, either:

Over the last financial year, the number of new cases which made it to prosecutors declined from 888,053 to 792,895.

Sloppy investigative work and poor prosecution were also at record highs, which resulted in over 100,000 cases having to be withdrawn.

The courts are also chaotic, with 14% fewer court cases being completed and criminal courts only sitting for around three hours per day.

Sheesh, this is all horribly depressing.

If you need a bit of pick me up, please watch this video of an octopus exchanging its plastic-cup-home for a shell.

Nobody will judge you for wanting to take a break from the chaos.

[source:mybroadband]