Taxpayers spend millions to try curb overwhelmed police forensic laboratories

Despite spending nearly R40 million on overtime, South Africa’s police forensic laboratories remain overwhelmed, with hundreds of thousands of cases stalled beyond internal performance deadlines.

Acting Minister of Police Firoz Cachalia revealed the figures in a written reply to a parliamentary question from Democratic Alliance MP Lisa Schickerling, who asked about persistent backlogs in forensic case analysis at the South African Police Service (SAPS).

According to Cachalia, SAPS forensic laboratories have faced a sustained influx of cases driven by intensified police operations, while staffing levels and infrastructure have failed to keep pace.

As a result, overtime spending has been used as a stopgap measure to prevent the backlog from growing even further.

By the end of the second quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, the Biology Section of the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) was carrying 210,426 cases that had exceeded internal turnaround targets.

The bulk of this backlog, 177,023 cases, consisted of intelligence entries. While these cases are not directly court-bound, Cachalia said they are critical for processing and uploading DNA profiles to the National Forensic DNA Database.

Other forensic divisions are also under strain. The Ballistics Section recorded a backlog of 44,636 cases, while the Chemistry Section was sitting with 61,262 outstanding analyses.

Cachalia acknowledged that declining human resource capacity has compounded the problem. Staff numbers at the FSL dropped from 1,810 employees in 2021 to 1,694 by the end of the second quarter of the current financial year.

He also pointed to deteriorating infrastructure, saying environmental conditions in some facilities have steadily worsened due to longstanding maintenance deficiencies.

“The influx of cases with limited resources and infrastructural issues remains a challenge for the FSL,” Cachalia said.

To compensate, SAPS applied for additional funding to pay staff for overtime work.

Overtime costs totalled R39.5 million over the past three financial years, with R8.5 million spent in 2023/24, R19 million in 2024/25, and a further R12 million already incurred by mid-2025/26.

Despite the expenditure, the scale of the backlog highlights ongoing concerns about the sustainability of forensic services critical to criminal investigations and prosecutions.

Attempts to mitigate delays

Cachalia claimed that interventions have been implemented within the criminal justice system to minimise delays in the provision of forensic analysis.

The first is a collaborative project between the National Prosecuting Authority and the SAPS, called the National Technical Inter-Sectoral Committee, for the management of sexual offences.

This committee convenes every quarter and focuses on court-bound cases, discussing and realigning court reports.

“Since the establishment of the project, the SAPS has ensured the prioritisation of cases and non-withdrawal of cases due to a lack of DNA reports (212 statements), and there is no backlog on GBVF and any other DNA-related cases,” Cachalia said.

There is also the National Forensic Pathology Services Committee, which convenes every quarter and focuses on unidentified human remains for burial purposes.

Cachalia said that the FSL has also partnered with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which will help alleviate pressure on intelligence analysis and create a contingency for continuous service delivery.

South Africa’s prosecution crisis

South Africa’s low prosecution rate of murders has often been linked to forensic backlogs in the past.

In December, Cachalia told a parliamentarian that just over 10,074 cases of murder had been referred for prosecution during the 2024/25 financial year.

While this figure may seem significant, it is but a fraction (40%) 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.”