Rising murder rates, a collapse in internal discipline and the inefficient use of police resources were cited as evidence of a 20-year decline in the performance of the South African Police Service (SAPS). These submissions were made by Jean Redpath, a researcher from the Dullah Omar Institute at the University of the Western Cape, to parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating corruption in the criminal justice system. This was one of many public submissions made by organisations to help the committee with its work.
The submissions follow serious allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi in July regarding criminal syndicates and cartels infiltrating justice structures. Redpath noted that the murder rate has surged from 29 per 100,000 people in 2011 to 46 per 100,000 in recent years. “We have regressed from all the gains we previously made.
The police’s role is excruciating to the operation of the criminal justice system,” Redpath said on Wednesday. The research further illustrated a sharp decline in public confidence and investigative capacity. According to the institute: In 2001, roughly 243,000 offenders were sentenced to prison annually.
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According to National Prosecuting Authority reports, that figure has dropped to just 52,000, Redpath said. We want to urge caution about blanket kinds of interpretations of the law. The constitution says the national commissioner controls and manages the police service, subject to the directions of the minister, and the minister is responsible for the policing, which means parliament can hold him to account for the performance of the police.
She noted that disciplinary actions dropped from more than 5,000 cases in 2011 to fewer than 2,000 recently. “More disciplinaries don’t mean that people are behaving more badly, it means that the state is taking action and when you see a huge drop like that you should be concerned.” On the topic of “wasteful expenditure,” Redpath noted that while SAPS’s spending has increased, the correlation between budget and safety has vanished since 2016.
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