MANILA - The number of crimes committed in the Philippines dropped by 13 percent in 2016, according to records from the national police, showing a continuation of the downtrend in the last four years, and amid President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs which was launched last year.
Data obtained by Kyodo News from the Philippine National Police indicates that the total crime volume across the country fell from 675,816 recorded incidents in 2015 to 584,809 in 2016.
Nearly one-fifth of the total crime volume in the entire year was categorized as "index crimes," defined by the police as those that are "serious in nature and which occur with sufficient frequency and regularity such that they can serve as an index to the crime situation."
PNP: Crime rate down, but murder rate up
Crimes in this category -- which includes homicide, murder, physical injury, rape, robbery and theft -- numbered 139,462 for 2016.
Meanwhile, "non-index crimes," or those that involve violations of special laws and ordinances, made up the remaining 445,347 instances.
Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, a local crime watch group, believes Duterte's illegal drugs campaign has added much to the decline in the number of crimes in the last year.
"He has really shown the political will to curb the proliferation of illegal drugs and to really pin down drug suspects," Dante Jimenez, the group's founding chairman told Kyodo News, stating that that a large number of crimes in the country are borne out of drug addiction.
Jimenez suggested that legislators should also pass a proposed law in Congress reviving the death penalty in the country, as well as a bill lowering the age of criminal liability to deter would-be criminals.
http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/02/13/17/philippines-crime-rate-falls-13-percent-in-2016
King of Southeast Asia literally and figuratively slaying the critics, non-believers and haters with statistics once again..Why?!?