Crim­i­nal­i­ty has es­ca­lat­ed over time and has main­tained a steady pres­ence in our so­ci­ety, as re­flect­ed in our un­chang­ing crime sit­u­a­tion and sta­tis­tics, re­gard­less of the lev­el of gov­ern­ment in­volve­ment in crime pre­ven­tion.

The re­cent mile­stone of 100 mur­ders be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and April 11 and the com­ments by the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty caught my at­ten­tion. And I am grate­ful it has, as I am al­ways con­cerned about re­main­ing sen­si­tised to crime and the threat to safe­ty in the so­ci­ety in which I live.

The trend or im­proved tra­jec­to­ry does not cap­ture my lived re­al­i­ty, so I am al­ways un­der­whelmed by which year or which ad­min­is­tra­tion “is en­joy­ing” or “has pro­duced” low­er rates of crime. If I were pay­ing close at­ten­tion (and I am not), the head­lines would be­tray a coun­try with­out the so­lu­tions that act to abate crime and make the cit­i­zen­ry feel safer.