Criminals get away with it

Prosecutors are rejecting more than three-quarters of cases the police bring to them.

The SA Institute of Race Relations' South African Survey reveals that of the nearly 1.4million people arrested for serious crimes in the 2013-2014 financial year, only 301798 were convicted.

This "equates to a 22% conviction rate", said the institute's crime researcher Kerwin Lebone.

Lebone said the institute had reviewed the conviction rate for serious crimes over nine years.

"Arrests annually average 1.3million people, with an estimated 29% of these resulting in criminal convictions," he said.

Lebone said there was a high conviction rate in those cases that were prosecuted.

"This is because prosecutors generally only select cases they know they have a reasonable chance of winning.

"Prosecutors reject nearly 78% of cases police bring to them."

The survey was backed by Western Cape University researcher Lukas Muntingh, who said: "There needs to be purposeful arrests for serious crimes with suspects targeted based on good evidence."

National police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale disputed the institute's data, saying a case may be reported in one year but only get to court a few years later. In addition, he said, a docket being referred back to police by prosecutors was not "the end of the matter as further investigations are going to be done" in some cases.

Lebone said police needed more training.

"The turning away of cases means prosecutors are telling police they must do better in their investigations," Lebone said.

He said the survey showed there was a detective vacancy level of 30000 officers, "which is dire".

"Research on training, particularly training of detectives, points to areas of serious concern. The mistakes occurring are elementary ones," Lebone said.

Muntingh said the low conviction rate was because people were arrested on either poor or non-existent evidence. He said police had targets to meet, "although they deny this", citing statistics that showed that of 1.4-million arrests, nearly 45% were classified as non-priority.

They included people arrested for carrying pocket knives.

Makgale rejected assertions of shoddy detective work.

"[SA Police Service] training is on par with the best in the world. The issue is implementation as well as the fact that we are losing experienced detectives to the private sector. It takes time for new recruits to gain experience.

"To close the gap, we are recruiting retired detectives or those who have resigned."

Lebone said despite long prison terms - in 2013-2014 8556 people got life terms and 8199 were jailed for 20 years or more - research showed this did not deter crime.

"Unfortunately, lots of criminals are getting away with crime."