{"id":89840,"date":"2024-11-29T09:47:21","date_gmt":"2024-11-29T09:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/?p=89840"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:38:23","slug":"sa-on-track-for-lowest-murder-count-since-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/11\/29\/sa-on-track-for-lowest-murder-count-since-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"SA murder count on track for a two-year low"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A 5.8% drop in murders reported to the SAPS was announced this week. We all need good news, so let\u2019s not minimise the positive, but sometimes it\u2019s useful to take a longer-term view of the crime stats for context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the chart above we\u2019ve 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\u2019s financial year, which starts in April, so Q1 is April to June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing to note is that when the SAPS reports a 5.8% drop in murders, it\u2019s comparing this quarter with the same quarter last year, so Q2 2023. This quarter\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, if we were to look on the bright side, compared with previous years, this quarter\u2019s numbers are the lowest since 2021. There were 6,945 murders in Q2 2023, 7,004 in 2022 and 6,163 in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\ud83d\udcca\u00a0<em>For more like this, browse the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/charts.theoutlier.co.za\/\">Our World In Charts<\/a>\u00a0collection of more than 600 charts. All our charts are free to download and republish as long as visuals are not altered and include proper attribution to The Outlier.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So far this year to September, 19,279 murders were reported in South Africa. Unless December is particularly violent, we are on track to record the first decrease in murders since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10,1387],"tags":[73,1132,174,175,1298],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-89840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chart-gallery","category-crime","category-the-outlier","tag-crime","tag-crime-stats","tag-murder","tag-saps","tag-south-african-police-service"],"acf":{"big_number":"","big_number_caption":"","big_number_link":"","big_number_background":"","big_number_text_colour":"#000000","big_number_icon":false,"big_number_wide":"yes","featured_chart":{"ID":89839,"id":89839,"title":"Murders-Q2-2024","filename":"Murders-Q2-2024.png","filesize":42894,"url":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024.png","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2024\/11\/29\/sa-on-track-for-lowest-murder-count-since-covid\/murders-q2-2024\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"A 5.8% drop in murders reported to the SAPS was announced this week. While we all need good news, it\u2019s helpful to take a longer-term view.\nThe crime stats follow the SAPS\u2019s financial year, which starts in April. This means Q1 covers April to June, while Q2 is July to September. Change is tracked by comparing the same period over two concurrent years. So in Q2 2024, murders decreased by 5.8% compared with Q2 last year.\nThis quarter\u2019s murder 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 this quarter has recorded the lowest Q2 numbers since 2021: 6,945 murders in 2023, 7,004 in 2022 and 6,163 in 2021. \nSo far this year to September, 19,279 murders were reported. Unless December is particularly violent, we are on track to record the first decrease in murders since Covid.","name":"murders-q2-2024","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":89840,"date":"2024-11-28 16:48:11","modified":"2024-11-29 09:59:47","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1080,"height":1080,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024-1024x1024.png","large-width":1024,"large-height":1024,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024.png","1536x1536-width":1080,"1536x1536-height":1080,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Murders-Q2-2024.png","2048x2048-width":1080,"2048x2048-height":1080}},"flourish_chart_id":"","flourish_sub_title":"","flourish_chart_width":"medium","is_newsletter_post":"No","post_style":"owic","show_on_front":"Yes","link_through":"Yes","chart_url":"","background_colour":"#0089AA","text_colour":"#FFFFFF","bullets":"","related_link":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89840"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89865,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89840\/revisions\/89865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89840"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=89840"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=89840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}