Chinese police authorities registered 18,000 homicide cases in
2006, down 13.7 percent from the previous year.
The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced the figure on
Tuesday at a regular press conference.
The year 2006 saw 6,701 arson cases in China, down 12.8 percent
from 2005, 782 explosion cases, down 20 percent from 2005 and
32,000 rape cases down 4 percent.
Although the number of "serious violent criminal cases" dropped
markedly, the total number of criminal cases reached 4.653 million
in 2006, almost the same as 2005.
Police authorities also detected 3.144 million theft cases and
502,000 mugging and robbery cases in 2006.
Police authorities detected 79,000 drug-trafficking cases, down
16.4 percent from the previous year, 21,000 gambling cases, down
21.1 percent, 11,000 prostitution related cases, down 5.4 percent
and 2,854 porn publication producing and selling cases, down 9.8
percent.
Police arrested 679,000 juvenile criminal suspects in 2006, down
5.5 percent from 2005 and accounting for 46.8 percent of the total
number of the arrested criminal suspects in 2006.
90 PERCENT HOMICIDE, MANSLAUGHTER CASES
SOLVED
According to Yu Xinmin, vice director of the MPS crime
investigation bureau, 91.4 percent of homicide and manslaughter
cases were solved in 2006, a record high.
Yu said homicide and manslaughter cases were priorities for the
police. He denied that the high solution rate was related to the
extraction of confessions under torture.
He said technology had helped policemen solve many criminal
cases. Fingerprint identification and DNA collection technology
have improved remarkably. A DNA database has been made available to
grassroots police bureaus to aid investigation.
He said that measures had been introduced to prevent police from
extorting confessions through torture, including videotaping the
whole interrogation process.
(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2007)
