A 5.8% drop in murders reported to the SAPS was announced this week. We all need good news, so let’s not minimise the positive, but sometimes it’s useful to take a longer-term view of the crime stats for context.
In the chart above we’ve visualised both the monthly (red bars) and quarterly (grey bars) crime stats from January 2017 to September 2024. When the SAPS releases its stats, it talks about quarterly numbers. This can be confusing because, for example, the latest quarter, Q2 2024, covers July to September. This follows the SAPS’s financial year, which starts in April, so Q1 is April to June.
The other thing to note is that when the SAPS reports a 5.8% drop in murders, it’s comparing this quarter with the same quarter last year, so Q2 2023. This quarter’s murders stats are the highest this year: January to March had 6,536 murders, April to June had 6,198 and July to September had 6,545.
But, if we were to look on the bright side, compared with previous years, this quarter’s numbers are the lowest since 2021. There were 6,945 murders in Q2 2023, 7,004 in 2022 and 6,163 in 2021.
Murders generally spike in December, which means the numbers reported for Q3 are the highest. If we add the total murders reported for this year to September, it comes to 19,279 murders, so unless we have a particularly violent December (last year there were 7,710 murders in the last three months), we are heading towards the first year where murders have decreased since Covid.
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