South Africa’s police docket crisis

The South African Police Service is drowning in dockets it is struggling to solve.

For every ten dockets the police close every year, an average of 6 are closed without resolution, the Minister of Police revealed in a reply to Parliament in October. 

About 2.04-million new dockets were opened in the 2024 financial year, and 1.93-million were closed.

780k cases were solved, but 1.15-million had no resolution.

By the end of the year, the police service still had a total of 1.9-million cases open and under investigation. These include cases from previous years that have still not been closed. The number of open cases has been steadily increasing since 2015, when there were 1.5-million.

Dockets closed without resolution “can be reopened if, for example, new evidence emerges,” the police minister said.

The number of dockets opened every year saw a sharp drop between 2019 and 2021. Though the number has risen since then, it is still lower than it was in 2019.

Criminologist at Stellenbosch University, Guy Lamb, says this is likely because of the decriminalisation of cannabis possession.

Chart produced by The Outlier in partnership with GroundUp.