SAPS under fire as police committee investigates 'inaccurate' women's crime data - IOL
Ian Cameron, Chairperson of the Police Portfolio Committee is concerned about the accuracy in crime statistics on women and children in the country.
The Portfolio Committee on Police is probing allegations that crime statistics involving women could be inaccurate and that police stations with high incidences of crime have remained unchanged.
The committee received a detailed briefing from SAPS on the 2026/2027 first-quarter crime statistics on Wednesday. They informed the committee that the police service is undertaking a process to probe and verify discrepancies identified in the reporting of crimes against women and children.
Ian Cameron, the Chairperson of the committee, said the SAPS confirmed that problems with its crime statistics on women and children are still not resolved despite the matter being raised in June 2025. He said the SAPS allegedly omitted separate figures for women and children murdered, subjected to attempted murder or seriously assaulted.
“SAPS management told us the figures were in the full report. We checked. They were not. In my letter of 17 June, I asked why the figures were missing and why Parliament had been given an inaccurate answer. SAPS’s own explanation revealed several faults in the data drawn from police dockets and its Crime Administration System,” Cameron said.
Cameron said adding up the quarterly figures did not produce the annual totals. He said some offences had been counted more than once, so that the women-and-children subset could exceed the total number of victims. He said there were also inconsistencies in recording victims’ ages and sexes and in linking victims to the correct charges.
“I will ask SAPS for a firm deadline to complete the rectification process. It must identify which figures were wrong or withdrawn, publish the corrected data, and account for the inaccurate information given to Parliament,” he said.
The committee warned that unreliable data could undermine public confidence and compromise the ability of the police to plan and implement targeted crime-fighting strategies.
“It is incomprehensible that crime statistics relating to one of the most troubling categories of crime in our country, which has been the subject of a national emergency response, can be affected by such serious discrepancies,” Cameron said.
He said credible crime statistics are fundamental to effective policing because they enable SAPS to identify trends, allocate resources and develop appropriate responses. The committee expressed particular concern about discrepancies relating to crimes against women in categories including murder, attempted murder and rape.
The committee called for improvements in the capabilities of SAPS Technology Management Services (TMS) and to ensure that the systems used to capture, process and report crime statistics are fit for purpose and capable of producing credible and standardised data.
The committee also questioned whether marginal reductions recorded in some crime categories should be viewed as meaningful progress when certain police stations continue to experience persistently high levels of particular crimes.
Cameron said population size and other demographic factors may influence crime levels, the committee noted that many of the police stations with high incidences of particular categories of crime have remained largely unchanged.
“We need to see measurable improvements in the communities and police stations most affected by serious and violent crime,” Cameron said.
