South African Police Service Annual Crime Records 2008-2023
South Africa, 2008 - 2023
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South African Police Service Annual Crime Records 2008-2023
SAPSACR 2008-2023
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| South Africa | ZAF |
Other
In accordance with the Section 218 (f) of the Interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No. 200 of 1993), the South African Police Service (SAPS) should enable the provision of crime intelligence data, criminal records and statistics on quartely and annual basis. The annual crime records cover crime perpetrated and reported to or detected by the police across all police stations in South Africa. The records include crime figures at station level that can be aggregated to both provincial and national levels. The crime records are divided into five broad crime categories, namely; contact crime, contact-related crime, property-related crime and other serious crime, making up the seventeen (17) serious types of crime reported to the police by the public, and crimes detected as a result of police actions.
Administrative records
Other
Version
Version 1
2024-12-28
Scope
The scope of the SAPS Annual Crime Records includes:
CONTACT CRIMES: These crimes involve the use of violence or a threat to use violence that is directed against the person of a victim. The category includes murder, attempted murder, sexual offences, assault with the intention to inflict grievous bodily harm, common assault, common robbery and robbery with aggravating circumstances (the latter divided into the subcategories of carjacking, truck hijacking, bank robbery, robbery of cash in transit, robbery at residential premises and robbery at non-residential premises).
CONTACT-RELATED CRIMES: This category includes only two crimes; arson and malicious damage to property. These are violent crimes committed against material assets with the intention to cause damage and or the destruction of another person’s property.
CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY: These crimes occur in the absence of the victim or under circumstances in which the victim is unaware of the crime being committed at the time (no person is directly or immediately harmed or threatened during the commission of such a crime). The category includes burglary at residential premises, burglary at non-residential premises, theft of motor vehicles and motorcycles, theft out of or from motor vehicles and stock-theft.
OTHER SERIOUS CRIMES: The category includes all theft not mentioned elsewhere (common or other theft), commercial crime (fraud-related crimes) and shoplifting.
CRIMES DEPENDENT ON POLICE ACTION FOR DETECTION: These are crimes in general not reported by members of the public, but mainly detected through direct police action, such as roadblocks and SAPS intelligence-led operations. An increase in this broad category of crime usually indicates intensified police activity rather than an increased criminal activity. Crimes in this category include unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, unlawful possession of and dealing in drugs and sexual offences detected by police action (including prostitution, keeping of a brothel and pornography-related offences)
Coverage
National coverage
Police station level
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| South African Police Service | Government of South Africa |
survey_instrument
Crime Docket
Data Collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 2023 |
The years in the data are tax years and run from 1st March to 28/29 February each year. Note that the 12 months that ends in February 2022 is considered the 2022 tax year, so 10 of the 12 months in the 2022 tax year are acutally in the 2021 calendar year.
- Other
| Name | Affiliation | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|
| South African Police Service | Government of South Africa | SAPS |
The crime docket is used as the main source document for official collection of offences in the SAPS. The data points found here represent the number of charges or counts and not the number of case dockets registered. One case docket can contain a single count of a specific offence, multiple counts of an offence or even several different types of offences. The recorded offences may involve one victim or complainant or multiple victims. If multiple offences are committed during a single crime incident, each offence will be recorded in addition to the primary offence. Thus, these additional counts also form part of the crime record (e. g. if murder and rape occurred during a house robbery incident, then all three crimes will appear in the crime records).
Data processing
The main value add in the records is now a single observation in the annual crime records that represents offence variables reported to the SAPS at a certain station or mobile station (GIS locations are also included) in a particular financial year. This new data structure increases the utility of the data by enabling spatial and time series approaches to be analyses of the records.
Data appraisal
Some police stations only keep crime information for the last two financial years. Thus, there is missing data for the years before 2021
Data Access
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town | support@data1st.org | support@data1st.org |
Public access data for use under a Creative Commons CC-BY (Attribution-only) License
South African Police Service. South African Police Service Annual Crime Records 2008-2023 [dataset]. Version 1. Pretoria: South African Police Service (SAPS) [producer], 2023. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor], 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25828/5MAW-4H90
Output produced based on this dataset will only be released in line with the NT-SDF data checking policy.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | URL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town | support@data1st.org | support@data1st.org |
Metadata production
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| DataFirst | University of Cape Town | Metadata producer |
2025-02-03
Metadata version
Version 1