Only 40% of murders recorded in South Africa are prosecuted

South Africa’s prosecution rate for murders committed and recorded by the police throughout the 2024/25 financial year sits at 40%, with the conviction rate much lower.

This is according to information provided by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, who told a parliamentarian that just over 10,074 cases of murder had been referred for prosecution during the financial year.

While this figure may seem significant, it is but a fraction of the 25,423 murders that were recorded throughout the period.

For the 2025/26 year, the South African Police Service (SAPS) set a murder detection rate target of 11.33%.

This figure refers to the number of cases in which the police identify and charge at least one suspect.

According to Ian Cameron, the chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee on police, this raises serious questions.

“It suggests that nearly 90% of murder cases may remain unresolved — an outcome that is deeply concerning in a country already facing high levels of violent crime,” he said.

“While we acknowledge the investigative pressures SAPS faces — including resource constraints, forensic backlogs and rising case volumes — Parliament cannot accept targets that risk normalising impunity.”

In a separate response, Cachalia revealed that the detection rate for the murder of women has only declined over the past three years.

The figure stood at 18.31% in 2022/23, then dropped to 16.96% in 2023/24, before falling further to 15.58% in 2024/25.

South Africa is currently experiencing an extreme detective shortage, with only 15.1% of SAPS members presently deployed in these positions.

In 2024, suspended Police Minister Senzo Mchunu revealed that of the 20,376 officers recruited over the previous two years, only 3,142 were appointed to detective positions.

This means that some detectives are assigned to handle 300 to 500 case dockets each.

As for preparing cases for prosecution, Cachalia explained that cases are often removed from the court roll due to outstanding reports, resulting in prosecution delays.

To reduce these delays, he says that those removed are placed on a brought-forward system to ensure that outstanding cases are attended to.

This system is in place at every police station in the country and is also used for cases that are filed as undetected for various reasons and are reopened when new evidence arises.

He added that there is also close coordination with the National Prosecuting Authority during investigations to ensure that evidence meets prosecutorial standards.

Less than 40% of criminal cases are solved

In a response to another parliamentarian, Cachalia revealed that 21,497,020 dockets were opened by the South African Police Service (SAPS) between the 2015/16 financial year and 2024/25.

Of these, only 8,050,088 (37%) dockets were solved, meaning that more than 13.4 million of the dockets remain unsolved.

The largest portion of criminal dockets was registered in 2015/16, at 2.39 million, followed by 2016/17, at 2.36 million.

Dockets consistently decreased until 2020/21, when they began to rise again. They have since fluctuated above 2 million.

Gauteng consistently registered the highest number of criminal dockets, followed by the Western Cape.

However, given that the latter’s population size is less than half that of Gauteng, its rate of dockets per capita is significantly higher.

Despite these numbers, police stations across the country have never collectively solved more than 1 million cases in a year.

However, despite having a smaller population size, the Western Cape consistently solved more cases than Gauteng, except in the 2020/21 financial year.

On the other hand, the number of case dockets officially closed without resolution has consistently remained above 1 million every year across the decade.

This hit a high point in 2018/19 when 1.47 million criminal dockets were officially closed. However, it recently hit a low of 1.15 million.

Cachalia pointed out that these annual amounts cannot be totalled across the ten years, as it risks double-counting. This is also true for cases still under investigation.

The number of dockets that have remained open and under investigation at the end of every year has consistently been above 1.5 million for the ten-year period, except for the 2022/23 year, when it was 1.4 million.

As of the 2024/25 financial year, there were 1.9 million criminal dockets still open and under investigation.