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ISS Crime Hub data, maps and tools for journalists

The Crime Hub provides open access to regularly updated information and analysis on crime, violence, and the functioning of the criminal justice system in South Africa.

Launched in 2010 by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) with funding from the Hanns Seidel Foundation and GIZ, it creates downloadable infographics with crime-related information on national, provincial and municipal levels. Publicly available and verified information from sources such as the police crime statistics is used to create detailed maps, interactive tools, fact sheets and analysis.

The manager of the ISS Crime and Justice Information Hub, Lizette Lancaster, explains that indicators of crime and criminal justice can be used to capture trends, but these indicators must be anchored by baseline data and be sufficiently broad and reliable in order to reflect social and economic trends and contexts.

The Crime Hub provides detailed, easy to understand and ready to use information for journalists, academics, civil society, community-based organisations, government, and interested individuals:

  • Analysis on different crime categories, such as murder, rape, robbery, hijacking, election violence, and others
  • Information regarding the year and geographic location of individual crimes
  • Information about police stations, including station-specific reporting trends and contact details
  • Factsheets about the obligations and duties of police officers
  • Opinion articles on crime trends
  • Research and analysis on the performance of the criminal justice system
  • Research and analysis of different crimes, their impact on the country’s economy and criminal justice system, and what is being done by government, communities and other relevant parties to respond to those crimes

Maps

  • Election protest action – View stats on peaceful and violence election-related protests from 2014-21. Stats are available at district, municipal, provincial and national level.
  • Municipal crime – View crime stats for each municipality, district and precinct from 2006-20. IT covers various violent and property related crimes.
  • Public protest and violence – View incidents of protest and public violence from 2013-20, which are categorised by different protest motives.
  • Police precinct Census data – View Census data from 2011-20, including types of dwellings, employment status, gender, annual household income, language, and others.
  • Political attacks and killings – View data on fatal and non-fatal attacks of political, government or labour union office bearers since 2013.

Tools

  • Crime stats wizard – This allows users to compare different crime categories, police stations and reporting years, from 2006-20.
  • National crime – The occurrence of selected crime stats can be tracked from 2004-20. This tool is also available for provinces and precincts.
  • Criminal Justice performance – The performance of the police, courts and prisons can be measured for various categories, including budget expenditure, personnel, programme types, cases finalised, number of inmates, etc.
  • Crime trends from 1994-2004, as recorded by the SAPS, and available nationally and per province
  • SAPS monthly crime stats for different crime categories, by province, district, municipality and precinct, from 2017-20.

For more info, please contact Lizette Lancaster, Manager: Crime and Justice Information Hub of the ISS Justice and Violence Prevention Programme, [email protected], tel +27 12 346 9500 or @crimehub

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