“This is due to deliberate efforts by the Government of Uganda to tackle crime, efforts of the men and women of the Uganda Police Force and continued support from our sister security agencies to fight crime,” reads the executive summary.
Police registered a 9.8 percent drop in crime last year, according to the 2019 Uganda Police Crime report. The report, which is signed by the Inspector General of Police, Martin Okoth Ochola, shows crime cases dropped from 238,746 in 2018 to 215,224 in 2019.
“This is due to deliberate efforts by the Government of Uganda to tackle crime, efforts of the men and women of the Uganda Police Force and continued support from our sister security agencies to fight crime,” reads the executive summary.
Although there was general decrease in overall crime, cases of murder [homicide] increased by almost 5 percent last year. Statistics from the Criminal Investigations Directorate–CID show that police recorded 4,718 cases of homicide by the end of 2019 compared to 4,497 cases in 2018 indicating a 4.9% increase.
The murders are attributed to land wrangles, people taking the law into their hands, family misunderstandings, crime of passion and business rivalry among others. Just like 2018, Mbarara, Arua and Ntungamo districts maintained the top three positions after registering the highest number of killings.
Nevertheless, there was a slight decrease in the number of murders in the three districts. For instance, Mbarara recorded 129 murders last year compared to 138 killings in 2018; Arua registered 103 killings in 2019 compared to 106 cases in 2018 while Ntungamo recorded 97 homicide cases.
The IGP expressed concern about the persistent high number of defilement cases even though there was an 11 percent drop in the cases recorded in 2019 compared to 2018. “Defilement still poses a big problem to the Police. In 2019, whereas there was decrease in defilement cases by 11.4% from 2018, a total of 13,682 children were defiled, majority of whom being the girl child. This is unacceptable,” Ochola states.
There was a 0.4 percent increase in traffic and road safety cases. The number of crashes increased from 12,805 in 2018 to 12,858 in 2019, causing death of 3,407 people yet in 2018 only 3192 people lost lives in road carnage.
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