A survey showed Friday that 2 out of 3 women, including middle and high school students, felt they were not safe from sex crimes.

The Ministry of Security and Public Administration said of the 1,000 adults, 100 experts and 1,000 students that were surveyed, 30.4 percent, 37.0 percent and 52.2 percent, respectively, did not view society as safe.

A majority of the respondents picked sexual assault as the most serious crime to be eradicated out of the four major crimes the government aims to tackle, including violence in the home and at schools and tampering with food.

Over 62 percent of the adults and 76.9 percent of the students said the unsafe environment stemmed from weak punishment of assailants and poor efforts to prevent reoccurrences. Some 80.5 percent of the experts said the biggest problem lay in insufficient preventive education and the misguided perceptions of sex.

The results of the polls conducted by Global Research on July 18-25 were reported during the policy meeting presided by the prime minister to gauge public sentiment on safety.

(jhl@heraldcorp.com)