23 Feb 2016

The Botswana Police Service is mulling an idea to publish names of convicted rapists, somithing which might deter would-be rapists.

Responding to a question at the end of a five-day police senior officers annual conference in Gaborone recently, the Commissioner of Police, Mr Keabetswe Makgophe, said although it was difficult to implement the suggestion, the police might ultimately publish names of convicted rapists.

Nonetheless, Mr Makgophe said this was still a suggestion and a decision had not yet been made regarding the matter.

In his address at the start of the conference, he said the police were concerned that serious crimes such as murder, rape and others had increased in the period between 2014 and 2015.

Mr Makgophe said most of these incidents were committed by people known to the victim,

The police chief nevertheless pointed out that circumstances under which most of these crimes occurred, pointed to societal factors that could only be effectively tackled through national approach interventions.

Despite this, he said the police would continue to employ various policing strategies and initiatives to tackle these crimes. 

Mr Makgophe said BPS would continue to train and capacitate police officers on various fields such as investigation and prosecutio.  

On one hand, Mr Makgophe said the protection of witnesses was done when there were compelling reasons showing that the life of such an individual might be in danger. He therefore said it was unfortunate that recently a key witness in a murder case was brutally assaulted and died from the injuries he sustained. Ends