The South African Police Service (SAPS) has noted some of the media reports and questions from various media about the use of ratios and raw numbers when reporting crime statistics.
Although some of the media houses, such as the Daily Maverick, have demonstrated an understanding of this issue, SAPS thought it prudent to issue the statement clarifying the matter.
Both the ratios and raw numbers (actual case numbers) were provided to the media and loaded onto our website, as it has always been the case. The use of ratios is not intended to deliberately confuse matters or hide anything. The SAPS uses ratios as it a common international practice when doing comparisons.
When using ratios, it is possible to find that although a certain crime category may have decreased, it may show increase when considering the raw figures. There is nothing untoward.
The key issue is that since crime is a social phenomenon, one has a take a long time view as well as factor a key variable of the country's population in order to improve analysis. If one does not factor population change, it will result in an incorrect analysis and improper understanding of crime statistics. Normally, one would expect that as the population grows so should crime due to the increased opportunities, particularly contact crime. However, longitudinally, this has not been the case with South Africa, at least in the past nine years.
