Acting Police Corporal Delvin Mathurin
Statistics released by the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force (RSLPF) on Friday, January 15, 2016 revealed that there was an overall decrease in reported crimes for 2015.
Acting Police Corporal of the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) Delvin Mathurin told the media that a total of 17,463 offences were recorded by the police for the period January 1 to December 31, 2015.
This represents an overall decrease in reported crimes of 2,591 or 13 percent in 2015, compared to 2014 and 1,316 when compared to 2013. However, the detection rate remained at 52 percent.
Mathurin said the distribution of major categories of crime for 2015 indicates that crimes against the person, offences against property and summary offences recorded the highest number of reported cases, with these three categories accounting for over 94 percent of the total crimes recorded on island.
Robbery offences saw an increase of 18 percent. There was an overall reduction in offences against property. But burglary, stealing from person and unlawful damage recorded the highest number of cases.
Burglary continues to be the highest recorded offence within the category of offences against property.
Shifting his attention to sexual offenses, Mathurin said despite there has been an 11 percent decrease, 250 cases of sexual offenses were reported, with 70 cases being indecent assault and 59 cases of rape.
This is an indication that rape increased in 2015 as compared to 2014. There were an increase of 11 cases in 2015, and detection rate for all sexual offenses decrease by 11 percent.
Meanwhile, the CIU official said there has been a constant decline in murders from 2011, with 2015 representing the year with the lowest number of homicides on record since 2007. A breakdown of homicide statistics revealed that there has been a declining trend over the past four years.
While there was zero recorded number of murders for the first quarter of 2015, the month of April recorded the highest number of cases. There were 28 murders and 29 homicides for 2015.
The highest number of murders was recorded in Castries, and was committed predominantly by young males against other young males using firearms and sharp objects, Mathurin explained.
He said the victim profiles indicate that males generally between the ages of 11 and 40 were the primary victims of murder on the Island.
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