PNP says total crime volume down 20% in first two years of Duterte term

Amid the high-profile killings of politicians in recent weeks, the Philippine National Police announced Sunday that the country's total crime volume has gone down by 20 percent in the first two years of President Rodrigo Duterte's term.

A day before Duterte is scheduled to deliver his third State of the Nation Address, the PNP said that from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018, the Philippines' two-year Total Crime Volume fell by 20.4 percent from the previous two-year total for the period from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2016. 

The statement did not include actual numbers for the Total Crime Volume, but stated that the number of index crimes "plunged 46.95 percent to only 212,773 incidents, from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018 from a high of 401,112 incidents recorded in the previous 2-year period."

The Philippine Statistics Authority defines index crimes as crimes that are "sufficiently significant and which occur with sufficient regularity to be meaningful." Included in this category are murder, homicide, robbery, theft, carnapping, and physical injury.

According to the PNP, there were 99,773 incidents of crimes against persons from July 2016 to June 2018, a number 30.42 percent lower than the 143,385 incidents reported in the same period from 2014 to 2016.

The PNP also said that there was a 56.16-percent decline in crimes against property, including fewer robbery (52.12 percent), theft (58.50 percent) and carnapping (50.10 percent) incidents, as part of a "steady downtrend over the past five years." — BM, GMA News