Bongani Bingwa speaks to Lizette Lancaster from the Institute for Security Studies about the latest crime statistics.
South Africa’s escalating crime is a symptom of an inept police leadership and the crisis in policing on the ground.
That’s the view of one crime expert, commenting on the country’s latest crime statistics released on 23 November 2022.
The report, which focuses on the period between July and September this year, contains double-digit percentage increases recorded for murder, attempted murder and assault of women.
In a shocking revelation, Police Minister Bheki said 7,004 people were murdered in the second quarter of 2022.
This is 841 more people compared to the same period in 2021.
A total of 10,590 rape cases were opened with the South African Police Service (Saps) between July and September 2022.
Lizette Lancaster from the Institute for Security Studies believes crime has worsened because of the dysfunction at the top of the police hierarchy.
Speaking to Bongani Bingwa, Lancaster said the Saps had a blueprint for professionalising the police in the National Development Plan, which has been overlooked.
This guideline talks about the serial crisis in police leadership and how this need to be overhauled. It talks about the basics of dockets, eradicating corruption and ensuring there’s a consistent command and control at station level.
Lizette Lancaster, manager at the Crime and Justice Information and Analysis Hub at the Institute for Security Studies
But because we have the serial crisis in policing leadership, the efficiencies at station level and the dysfunction of crime intelligence, we’ve seen organized crime and gangs that proliferated, expanded their operations and gained more guns. We have more guns on the street now than we have in decades.
Lizette Lancaster, manager at the Crime and Justice Information and Analysis Hub at the Institute for Security Studies
Lancaster believes the structure of the police service needs a whole new rethink.
We need intelligence drive operations and basics to be applied, like having the dockets linked. These gangs who are driving these mass shootings, they commit other crimes as well and their cases need to be linked and we’re not seeing that.
Lizette Lancaster, manager at the Crime and Justice Information and Analysis Hub at the Institute for Security Studies
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