Insufficient evidence and no leads force Saps to close over 1 million dockets a year

Over one million dockets a year are closed by police, leaving victims of crime empty and unable to get justice.

In a five-year period between the 2018 and 2023 financial years, over five million criminal cases were closed by the South African Police Service (Saps) due a lack of evidence or leads. A fraction of this number was also due to the theft and loss of dockets.

Police minister Bheki Cele recently revealed that 1 051 340 cases were closed without a result in the 2022/2023 financial year. The highest number from the five-year period was 1 215 394 back in 2017/2018.

Gauteng’s police had the worst recorded amount of cold cases in the 2022/23 financial year, closing a total of 331 965. The Western Cape and KZN followed with 217 701 and 177 415 cases, respectively.

Additionally, the dockets for 59 open cases had been lost in the last five years.

A total of 10 dockets for open cases had been stolen in that five year period, but alarmingly, 44 open case dockets were stolen between March 2023 and December 2023, a period outside of the figure presented by Cele.

Limpopo was the key culprit in this statistic, contributing 26 of those 44 thefts.

NPA sends back almost two million dockets to Saps

It was announced in March that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had sent 1.8 million case dockets back to Saps for further investigations since 2018. These dockets did not include cases already enrolled in the courts.

It blamed this in part on a shortage of detectives.

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Senior police management told a portfolio committee in September that South Africa had roughly 17 000 detectives responsible for investigating all crimes across the nation.

Criminals escaping justice

The figures illustrated the staggering disconnect between the number of crimes reported and the number of perpetrators who potentially go unpunished.

Cele announced an increase in the murder rate when releasing the crime stats for the third quarter of the current financial year.

ALSO READ: Crime stats: Murders increase in SA while sexual offences decline

However, sexual related crimes have gone down, according to the latest crime stats covering the period from 1 October to 31 December 2023.

Stressing his desire to curb the numbers, he said: “It is important to highlight that attention and more resources have been allocated to stations that have the highest number of murders reported.”