Tag Archives: South Africa

South Africa has recently experienced major unrest crippling economic infrastructure, but “Police were often missing in action as thousands raided malls and shut down transport, supply chains and logistics hubs.” This column lays the blame on a decade of deteriorating police performance, … Continue reading →

Police in South Africa are “undertrained, uncontrolled, and deadly” according to this article. Some problems reflect the legacy of apartheid, while others are due to more recent neglect, corruption, and overt political interference. Former officers report that “in the first … Continue reading →

This post urges the South African Police Service to develop the habit of learning from failure. The author cites the example of the airline industry, which carefully analyzes crashes and “near misses” in order to figure out what happened so … Continue reading →

This column from South Africa points out the parallel between the scientific, evidence-based approach now being taken to control the impact of COVID-19 on public health, and the case for evidence-based policing to deal more effectively with crime and disorder. … Continue reading →

This report provides an analysis of murder and robbery in two Cape Town precincts, Nyanga and Durbanville, one dense and high-incident, the other more dispersed and affluent. Spatial and temporal clustering is carefully examined to identify patterns and concentrations of … Continue reading →

This column describes the early implementation of sector policing in South Africa’s 1149 police stations and argues that its structural changes need to be combined with an emphasis on evidence-based practices in order to be effective. In the author’s view, … Continue reading →

In South Africa, more police die in car crashes than are murdered, as reported here. For the period 2012-2015, on-duty police crash deaths exceeded assault fatalities by 117 to 93, while the off-duty gap was even greater at 71% (313 … Continue reading →

Some 69,000 promotions and grade progressions have been backlogged in the South African Police Service since 2011. This year nearly half have been caught up, ahead of schedule in a 3-year plan, as reported here. In addition, 5000 entry-level SAPS … Continue reading →