How We Present Crime Data

Raw crime counts are not adjusted for population

All crime figures are raw reported counts as published by SAPS — they are not divided by population. This means precincts serving larger residential areas will naturally report more crimes than smaller ones. A precinct like Khayelitsha, which covers a very large population, will have high absolute crime counts even if the rate per resident is similar to smaller precincts.

Use raw counts to understand the scale of crime in an area. Use the change vs prior year to understand whether crime is changing. Do not compare raw counts across precincts of different sizes without this context.

Precinct-level data only

SAPS publishes crime statistics at police precinct (station) level — the lowest geographic level available. There is no official suburb-level crime data in South Africa. A single precinct typically covers multiple suburbs, so all suburbs served by the same police station share identical crime statistics.

This means crime data for a quiet residential suburb may include incidents from a neighbouring commercial or high-traffic area within the same precinct. We make this clear on every suburb page.

Trend classification thresholds

Trend labels (vs prior year and baseline) use a ±2% threshold to avoid labelling normal fluctuation as meaningful change:

This threshold applies to both the vs-prior-year comparison and the pre-COVID baseline comparison. Small precincts with low crime counts may show large percentage swings from minor fluctuations — the threshold helps filter out noise.

When we do not show a percentage change

Where a precinct recorded fewer than 50 crimes in the prior financial year, we show the direction of change and the underlying counts, but not a percentage. On a very small base a percentage describes arithmetic rather than crime: a precinct going from 1 reported crime to 196 is a genuine increase, but expressing it as "+19,500%" implies a precision the figure does not carry.

This affects 45 of 1,173 precincts. The counts themselves are always shown, so nothing is hidden — you can compare the two years directly. Percentages are shown normally for every precinct at or above that prior-year threshold.

Raw counts and per-capita rates

SafeSuburb displays raw crime counts as published by SAPS on all precinct pages. Per-capita rates (crimes per 100,000 population) are shown on the Insights page for the 63 City of Cape Town precincts where precinct-level Census 2022 population data is available. For all other precincts across all provinces, only municipal-level population data exists (shared across multiple precincts within the same municipality), which is not precise enough for meaningful per-capita comparisons between different precincts.

Precincts serving larger populations will naturally show higher raw crime counts. A higher count does not necessarily mean an area is more dangerous — it may simply have more people. Trends vs prior year and 5-year baseline comparisons are more reliable indicators, as these compare a precinct against its own history.

Reported crime only

SAPS data reflects crimes reported to police. Crime reporting rates vary significantly by area. Under-reporting is common in many communities, meaning the true crime picture may differ from what the statistics show.

Data coverage

Our data spans 13 complete financial years (2013-2014 through 2025-2026), drawn from two SAPS publication types:

Category counts above exclude the six robbery sub-types that SAPS reports both individually and within Robbery with aggravating circumstances (see "How aggravated robbery is counted" below). The five categories the annual publication does not carry are Culpable homicide, Public violence, Crimen injuria, Neglect and ill-treatment of children and Abduction; they are not published in the annual station-level dataset, so figures for them begin with our quarterly coverage in 2019/20 rather than indicating any change by SAPS. Together they account for about 2% of national totals. Where SAPS has not yet published all quarters for a financial year, totals cover only the available quarters. Comparisons vs prior year annualize both years (scaling totals by 4 / quarters available) to produce comparable full-year estimates. Charts and stat cards clearly label incomplete years.

Population data — two levels of accuracy

Per-capita crime rates require population data. We use two different official Census 2022 sources:

Per-capita rates are not displayed on individual precinct pages because only 63 out of over 1,150 precincts have accurate precinct-level population data. Per-capita analysis is available on the Western Cape Insights page, scoped to the 63 City of Cape Town precincts. Neither source accounts for population changes since 2022, daytime populations, or seasonal shifts in tourist areas. Municipal population figures were sourced from citypopulation.de (aggregating Stats SA Census 2022 data).

Suburb-to-precinct mapping

Our suburb-to-precinct mapping was originally compiled from community sources — Community Policing Forum websites, municipal GIS portals and SAPS documentation. Since August 2026 it is checked against the official SAPS station catchment polygons published at saps.gov.za/services/boundary.php. 1,935 suburbs are now boundary-confirmed — their location falls inside the catchment of the station we publish them under — and 58 were corrected where it did not (see the correction logged below). A further 345 suburbs have no official coordinates we could obtain, so the question cannot be asked of them; they are reported as unverified rather than assumed correct. The remainder are flagged for review: a boundary disagreement is a candidate, not proof of error — the same suburb name often appears in several places, and our review list runs at roughly 75% precision, so each row is corroborated against a second official dataset before anything is changed. We welcome corrections — email us at hello@safesuburb.co.za.

Station renaming: SAPS has recently renamed many police stations across the country (e.g. Grahamstown to Makhanda, Queenstown to Komani, Aliwal North to Maletswai). We map suburbs to the current official SAPS station names as they appear in quarterly crime statistics releases. Some stations have limited suburb coverage in our data — particularly in the Eastern Cape — because the renaming makes it harder to match historical mapping data to current station names.

Coverage: Suburb coverage varies by province. City of Cape Town precincts have the most detailed suburb mappings (5-15 suburbs per precinct). Rural and recently renamed stations may only show the station name itself as a single suburb. In all cases, the underlying crime data for the precinct is complete — only the suburb name mapping may be limited.

Excluded stations

Each SAPS quarterly release lists a small number of stations SafeSuburb does not publish a page for. As of the 2025/26 data that is 27 stations, in two groups. Twenty are pre-rename names. When SAPS renames a station it keeps reporting the old name as a separate row. We publish only the current name — Grahamstown appears as Makhanda, Queenstown as Komani, Uitenhage as Kariega — so the old name gets no page of its own. Their figures are not discarded: the pre-rename years are merged onto the current station, as described above. Excluding the old row prevents the same station being counted twice. Seven are genuinely excluded from every site-wide figure — volume tiers, trends, medians, category totals and all pages. Four report no crime at all in any quarter (Koopmansfontein, Tafalehashe, Weza, and Katkop, an Eastern Cape record with no data under that name since 2023/24); Dingleton is a ghost town demolished for mine expansion; and two are ports of entry serving no residential population, covered immediately below.

Renamed stations — full history restored. When SAPS renames a station it reports the old and new names as separate rows, and the earlier years sit under the old name. Those years are now merged onto the current station, so a renamed precinct shows its complete record rather than starting at the rename date. Makhanda, for example, now shows all 13 financial years from 2013/14, including the years recorded as "Grahamstown". This covers 20 stations verified against gazette records — see the correction logged below. Where a year exists under both names, the current station's own figure is kept.

Ports of entry. We also exclude dedicated port-of-entry stations that serve no residential population — chiefly King Shaka International Airport and Maydon Wharf (Durban harbour). Because SafeSuburb is about the areas people live in, crime recorded at an airport or harbour terminal would be misleading in a residential-safety context. This means our national totals sit about 0.03% below SAPS's all-stations national figure (roughly 528 of ~1.85 million reported crimes for Apr 2025–Mar 2026). The figure most often quoted — the national murder count — is unaffected (these stations recorded no murders). Note: OR Tambo International Airport is included, because its precinct also serves real residential suburbs (e.g. Bonaero Park). The same exclusion applies to the interactive crime map — its national tallies are independently verified against SAPS's raw published figures and sit a few dozen crimes below SAPS's own national total per category, almost entirely from drug-related crime (harbour and airport drug interdictions are disproportionately concentrated at these excluded stations, unlike residential-crime categories such as burglary or assault).

Every site-wide computed figure — volume tiers, trends, medians, and aggregate totals — is calculated over the 1,173 precincts SafeSuburb publishes as of the 2025/26 data, not the full SAPS station list. This keeps every ranking and comparison scoped to areas you can actually look up on this site.

Additionally, some stations show extreme jumps vs the prior year (>200%) in their first years of data because they were newly established or had boundary changes. These stations are included on the site but their early-year data should be interpreted with caution: Kamhlushwa and Phola (Mpumalanga), Mokopane (Limpopo, renamed from Potgietersrus), Mareetsane (North West), Makhaza and Samora Machel (Western Cape).

How aggravated robbery is counted

SAPS publishes Carjacking, Truck hijacking, Cash-in-transit robbery, Bank robbery, and robbery at residential and non-residential premises both as standalone figures and as components of the headline Robbery with aggravating circumstances category. To avoid double-counting, we report Robbery with aggravating circumstances as a single category — it already includes all of these sub-types (plus street and general aggravated robbery that isn't sub-classified). We therefore do not list the sub-types as separate line items or add them to totals; they are part of the aggravated-robbery figure shown.

Data corrections

We log material corrections to how we process SAPS data here, as part of presenting it faithfully.

• May 2026 — three SAPS categories restored to totals. Between March and May 2026, three reported-crime categories — Commercial crime, All theft not mentioned elsewhere, and Sexual offences detected as a result of police action — were unintentionally excluded from precinct totals due to a processing error on our side (they were mistakenly treated as duplicate subtotal rows). This understated the totals shown on precinct pages by roughly 20% on average, with a larger effect on business-district and commercial precincts. We corrected it on 29 May 2026: all totals, trends vs the prior year, and category breakdowns now reflect the complete SAPS station-level category set. SAPS's published figures were never affected — this was solely an error in how we processed them. See our Disclaimer regarding data accuracy and completeness.
• May 2026 — robbery sub-types no longer double-counted. SAPS reports carjacking, truck hijacking, cash-in-transit robbery, bank robbery, and house/business robbery both individually and within the headline Robbery with aggravating circumstances category. We had been adding both, which overstated totals by roughly 3% on average. We now count aggravated robbery once and treat those as a breakdown within it (see "How aggravated robbery is counted" above). As with the categories above, SAPS's published figures were unaffected — this was solely a processing error on our side.
• July 2026 — corrected an inaccurate statement about renamed stations. This page previously stated that where SAPS renames a station, "the historical record continues under the new name". That was not correct. When a station is renamed, SAPS reports the old and new names as separate rows, and our process excluded the old row — so the earlier years were dropped rather than carried forward. Twenty Eastern Cape precincts consequently showed a shortened history until we restored it, as described below. We found this on 29 July 2026 while reviewing an unrelated feature, and corrected the statement the same day. Why our checks did not catch it: our automated data tests verify internal consistency — that category counts sum to the totals we publish, that no precinct is orphaned, and that the percentage changes vs the prior year are arithmetically right. A precinct with a five-year history satisfies every one of those tests, because the missing years are absent rather than wrong. Nothing compared the length of each precinct's record against the SAPS source. We have since added that comparison as an automated check, and on 29 July 2026 we restored the missing years: 20 renamed stations now carry their pre-rename history, recovering 160 precinct-years of record. SAPS's published figures were never affected — this concerned which of them we carried forward.
• August 2026 — 58 suburbs were showing another station's crime figures. Our suburb-to-precinct mapping was inferred from community sources and had never been checked against an authoritative boundary, because until August 2026 we had not obtained one. When we did, 58 suburbs turned out to sit inside a different station's catchment from the one we published them under — so they showed that station's crime figures instead of their own. The error was systematic rather than random: suburbs with their own police station were routed to the main town station, so the effect fell along township and town-centre lines. Ikwezi, for example, showed Mthatha's 4,672 crimes rather than Ngangelizwe's 991. We corrected all 58 on 3 August 2026, each with a redirect from the old address. Why our checks did not catch it: a suburb mapped to the wrong station is perfectly self-consistent — it has a real precinct, real figures and a working page — so there was nothing internally inconsistent to detect. The error was in the correspondence to reality, which no internal check can see. What we changed: every build now verifies each located suburb against the official SAPS polygons and fails if any mapping drifts. Corrections are only applied when a second, independent government dataset agrees, because the boundary comparison alone is right about three times in four. SAPS's published figures were never affected — this concerned which station's figures we showed you.
• July 2026 — volume tiers corrected for 53 precincts to use the published-precinct set. Volume tier quintiles for 53 precincts, mostly in the Eastern Cape, had previously been calculated against a station set that included the unpublished stations described in "Excluded stations" above. We corrected this on 16 July 2026 so quintiles are computed over the published precincts only, consistent with the rest of this page. SAPS's published figures were unaffected — this was solely a computation-scope error on our side.

URL structure

Suburb pages follow the pattern /province/district/precinct/suburb/. When a police station serves a single main town with the same name, the URL will repeat the name (e.g. /hermanus/hermanus/). The first is the precinct (police station), the second is the suburb. The precinct page at /hermanus/ lists all suburbs served by that station.

Suburbs spanning multiple precincts

SAPS precinct boundaries don't always follow suburb lines. Across all provinces, 87 suburbs are physically split across two or more police precincts. For these suburbs, we show crime data from all relevant precincts on a single page so you can see the full picture without needing to know which precinct covers your street.

Search results show the volume tier from the primary precinct (listed first alphabetically). The suburb page shows both precincts' crime totals, trends, and breakdowns side by side.