South African Police Service (SAPS) crime data 2012 to December 2021

The data are a reformatted version of the 2020/21 Annual Crime Statistics provided by the South African Police Service (SAPS). The intention of this publication was to provide an overview of the number of crime occurrences reported to police stations (precincts) in the country across the nine provinces. Therefore, the highest representation of the data is at the police station level which can then be aggregated to the provinces as well as nationally, as is represented by the National and Provincial tabs in the spreadsheet. The data represents the various types of crime that take place within the country. The crime statistics generated by the SAPS are an important link in the value chain of the statistics system that inform policy development and planning in the criminal justice system. To ensure that the statistics produced by SAPS are in line with international best practice, SAPS has memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). The MOU is aimed at further enhancing the quality and integrity of the South African crime statistics. The collaboration with StatsSA will go a long way in enhancing the integrity of the SAPS crime statistics and ensuring that policy-makers have quality data to assist them with making policy decisions. Modifications were made to the data table provided in line with Hadley Wickham's tidy data standards for statistical research (DOI: 10.18637/jss.v059.i10).