SA’s crime crisis: Too many cases, too few detectives

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JEREMY MAGGS: South Africa continues to struggle with high levels of violence and property crime, but an equally worrying part of this picture is how many cases are never actually solved.

Willem Els is a senior training coordinator at the Institute for Security Studies, and he’s arguing that overloaded detectives, weak investigative capacity and poor crime detection are making it simply harder to hold offenders accountable, and obviously that undermines public confidence in police.

Willem, a very warm welcome to you. When we talk about low crime detection rates, what exactly are we measuring here?

WILLEM ELS: If you look at the detection rate, that is how we measure all the crimes committed and then the arrests that follow, the investigation, going through court, and those people then being convicted and sentenced. That is your detection rate that we measure there. Currently in South Africa it is just above 12%.

JEREMY MAGGS: How much, Willem, does that rate differ between different crimes such as murder, robbery and assault? Is it bad all the way around?

WILLEM ELS: It’s bad all the way around. But if you look at robberies, our detection rate is more or less 9%.

JEREMY MAGGS: And what about the others?

WILLEM ELS: Well, murder itself is about 10%. What happens is if it’s an easy crime, if there are witnesses and there’s a lot of information that can be followed, they do so, and then you get arrests.

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The challenge is that your average detective, some of them, they receive up to 200 new case files or dockets per month to investigate, and there’s just no way that they can thoroughly do that.

JEREMY MAGGS: Which suggests to us that there are just simply not enough detectives, right?

WILLEM ELS: Exactly. There are not enough detectives and also, your turnover there, detectives don’t last, they burn out very quickly and then they have to be replaced. That’s the one challenge that you have.

The other challenge is, because of the high turnover rate, your experience is withering, so we don’t have people with that experience who can actually [develop] and go through with serious and more complex cases.

JEREMY MAGGS: Which I guess begs the question, Willem, how closely then can we link this low detection rate that you’re talking about to the likelihood of someone ultimately being convicted? It would be very low, right?

WILLEM ELS: Exactly and your deterrence is then very low. When you look at the incarceration of criminals, we refer to it as your tertiary deterrence, and that should actually serve as a very good deterrence.

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But the challenge that you face here is because of the protection, because of the likelihood of these people being arrested and prosecuted, the odds are on their side, so now we see with organised crime, it’s easy money and low risk, and that is why it’s thriving.

JEREMY MAGGS: Willem, the figure that keeps going around in my head is that 200 dockets. You’ve raised concerns about very heavy detective caseloads, which is by all measures, not manageable. Is that a problem that is widespread across the country or simply based on the big metros?

WILLEM ELS: You’ve got your more dense areas where it is a bit more severe, but in general the overload is very high. In some of the places that don’t have a high crime rate, it might be less, but in general it is actually 200, and in some places it’s more than 200.

JEREMY MAGGS: Have you applied your mind then to what a manageable caseload for a detective is?

WILLEM ELS: Once again, it depends on the complexity of the case and so on. The ideal situation is that with serious crimes, you bring together a task team, a multidisciplinary task team, where you have 10 or 15 people, sometimes depending on the specialties that you need, and they work together to solve the case and then they focus on that case.

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That is when we see results. But unfortunately, it is not always possible in South Africa.

JEREMY MAGGS: So at what point then does the workload that you’re talking about start seriously compromising the quality of the investigation?

WILLEM ELS: Yeah, it does, severely so. If you are a detective, every morning you get back to your office, you’ve got 10 or 15 new cases or whatever, and there are no decisive leads that you can follow up.

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You will work on it, then you will look at the next one, where you have more of a chance of success, you will follow that up. The others will just be closed and filed.

JEREMY MAGGS: Willem, beyond staffing levels, which is obviously a huge problem. Are there other weaknesses in the investigative system that you’ve discerned that are also adding to the problem?

WILLEM ELS: Yeah, indeed. It’s your resources. You have your detective branches, you have your officers who have got zero vehicles, you’ve got others where I know here in Pretoria, the detectives are using their own vehicles and they are filling their own petrol just in order to do their job because there are no state vehicles available.

JEREMY MAGGS: What additional resources would make the biggest difference right now, apart from vehicles?

WILLEM ELS: Vehicles and of course technology, they need computers. There’s one national office where I’ve been informed that three officers are working on one computer, and that computer is about 20 years old.

We have to invest in technology. We have to invest in the support structure for these people to do their job. Otherwise, we’re not going to get there.

JEREMY MAGGS: To the best of your knowledge, is any of this happening, whether it be the investment in new technology or simply recruiting more detectives? Is that happening in any way?

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WILLEM ELS: It is happening. But the challenge is a detective doesn’t become a seasoned detective the moment they leave the college or they leave the training academy. Once they’ve been trained, they have to build up experience, and they have to be mentored and so on.

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But because of the high turnover rate, you keep on lacking experience, and your more experienced detectives, some of them get disillusioned. And of course, there are very lucrative contracts in the private sector and they end up there, depriving the police of that expertise.

JEREMY MAGGS: That’s a worry that we haven’t even spoken about, disillusionment means that there is very low morale within the SAPS (South Africa Police Service) itself. That’s even a bigger problem to turn around.

WILLEM ELS: Exactly. The idea of a commander, if you put it in the perspective of a detective commander, that needs to be a very seasoned detective who can guide, who can mentor, and who can actually assist these detectives, especially the less experienced ones.

But now you sit with your appointments where they are a lateral increase, where people who are not really suited for that position are being promoted because of political ties or other arrangements.

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That, of course, leads to that you don’t have the mentorship, but also your detectives who are working in that office, who are actually are suitable for that promotion, are being overlooked, and then the morale is even lower.

JEREMY MAGGS: William Els, thank you very much indeed, from the Institute for Security Studies.

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