Revealing figures: A 10-year review of South African criminal justice performance
| Jurisdiction | South Africa |
| Citation | (2004) 17 SACJ 220 |
| Author | Martin Schönteich |
| Pages | 220-239 |
| Date | 03 September 2019 |
| Published date | 03 September 2019 |
Revealing figures: A 10-year review
of South African criminal justice
performance
MARTIN SCHÖNTEICH*
Introduction
In April 2004 South Africans celebrated the tenth anniversary of their
country's first non-racial elections. While the country has become a stable
democracy, the South African 'miracle' has been blemished by a rising HIV/
AIDS epidemic, chronic unemployment and high levels of crime.
Between April 1994 and March 2003, 215,000 people were murdered in
South Africa, tarnishing the country with one of the highest murder rates in
the world. Crime is blamed for, inter alia, limiting the country's ability to
attract foreign investment, keeping cash-laden tourists from its shores, the
emigration of its skilled citizens, vigilantism, and even the revival of separatist
tendencies among (predominantly) white suburbanites through road
closures and access-restricted security villages. According to opinion poll
data, crime and unemployment appear to be consistently the most important
concerns for the majority of South Africans.
This article seeks to review the performance of the South African criminal
justice system in the decade after 1994. Given the limited space available to
do so, a number of choices had to be made about which criminal justice
performance indicators to include in this article and analyse in greater detail.
Invariably much available information had to be left out. Where appropriate,
reference is made to more detailed information in the footnotes for the reader
to pursue. Statistical information on recorded crime and the performance of
individual criminal justice departments, for the ten-year period under review,
is provided to the extent that it was available at the time of writing.
The article begins by looking at the amount of money government
allocated to the criminal justice system during the period under review. The
budget is a primary policy tool for any government, and provides an insight
into government concerns and changes in priorities over time.
A focal point of the article is crime and policing. Recorded crime,
combined with victimisation survey data, provides a fairly accurate picture of
*
B SocSc LLB (Natal), BA Hons (Unisa),
Senior Legal Officer, National CriminalJustice Reform,
Open Society Justice Initiative.
220
(2004) 17 SACJ 220
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5.4
1994/95
3.7
2004/05
7.4
10.5
7.7
10.7
11.8
11.6
13.1
12.6
14.8
14.4
16.9
-1
1. 11.1
22.9
25.5
A 10-year review of South African criminal justice performance
221
the level of insecurity South Africans face in respect of criminality, and the
extent to which the state has succeeded or failed to promote the public's
constitutional right to freedom and security. The police is the most direct and
visible tool in the state's fight against crime. Moreover, the workload of the
rest of the criminal justice system — the courts, prosecution and prisons — is
largely determined by the activities of the police: the number of crimes it
records and successfully investigates. Finally, the article takes a brief look at
the performance of the prosecution service and the country's correctional
system.
Budget allocations
In the decade after 1994, expenditure on the three core criminal justice
system departments (ie the Departments for Safety and Security, Justice and
Constitutional Development, and Correctional Services) increased by 165%,
from R14.4 billion in 1994/95 to R38.2 billion in 2004/05. Overall government
expenditure increasing by 149% over the same period.
The share of the national budget devoted to the criminal justice system
remained fairly constant in the ten-year period after 1994, following a
dramatic increase at the end of the apartheid era (partly as a result of the
reassignment of responsibilities from the military to the police). In 1994/95
the criminal justice system's share of total government non-interest
expenditure was 11.6%. By 2004/05 this had increased slightly to 11.8%
(Figure 1). The negligible increase in the proportion of government
Figure 1: Functional government expenditure as a proportion of overall non-
interest expenditure, 1994/95 and 2004/05
Housing & social services
Defence
General administration
Criminal justice
Health
Economic services
Welfare & social security
Education
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Percent
Source: National Treasury
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