Uganda Police reports 18% jump in number of crimes in 2022

The Uganda Police Force has today (Feb.22) released the Annual Crime Report for 2022 noting an 18% increase in the number of crimes from 196,081 cases reported in 2021 to 231,653.

IGP J.M Okoth – Ochola said, the increase in the number of cases was mainly due to the full opening of the economy after the Covid-19 lockdown and growing confidence to report crime to Police.

“Out of the total cases reported to Police in 2022, 68,405 cases were taken to Court, 26,749 cases were not proceeded with, while 136,499 cases were still under inquiry. This was an improvement compared to 2021 where 65,008 cases were taken to Court, 60,095 cases not proceeded with and 70,978 cases under inquiries,” Ochola said.   

Meawnile, there was a 35% increase in common traffic offences registered by the Directorate of Traffic and Road Safety countrywide from 336,722 cases in 2021 to 456,993 cases in 2022.

As a result, the number of road traffic crashes increased by 16.9% from 17,443 in 2021 to 20,394 in 2022 where 3,901 crashes were fatal, 10,776 were serious while 5,717 were minor by nature.

In the period under review, Ochola said, “our focus has been on improving the quality of services we offer to the public in terms of enhanced law and order, engagement of communities through community policing programmes, capacity building, and developing the initial phase of digitalising our processes for purposes of easing detection, reporting, tracking, supervision and analysis of crime trends.”  

He urged all Ugandans to continue the fight against crime for a safer Uganda.

Going forward, in 2023, the IGP said, the focus will be to remodel their process to support the Sub county policing model, welfare enhancement and digitalisation to enhance law and order.