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.

Source: Xinhua