How safe is your neighbourhood?

The local crime level is an important consideration when selecting where to live. National crime stats released annually by the South African Police Service (SAPS) aren’t necessarily credible, so it was refreshing when, last month, News24 launched CrimeCheck.

Update before you relocate

CrimeCheck was developed to help South Africans better understand their risk of becoming a victim in a country with crime levels among the highest in the world.

Before buying a house or relocating a loved one, ensure you understand the perils of your targeted area.

The application has been built over many months during which hundreds of thousands of official crime stats from 1,158 policing precincts, recorded from 2017 to 2022, have been processed. This data will continually be updated as crime data is released each quarter.

News24 editor-in-chief Adriaan Basson says CrimeCheck provides a gauge of risk on several crime indices, as well as on individual crimes such as murder and burglary. It also sheds light on each of the 50+ crime types per precinct, as reflected in SAPS data.

Crime-tracking tools

Working with a Geographic Information Systems mapping expert and drawing on annual district-level population estimates provided by StatsSA, figures are used to calculate the rate for various categories or crime types in each precinct.

‘From these rates we use a statistical normalisation technique to derive a value between zero and one for each category and precinct, allowing precincts to be compared year on year. This value powers the risk gauge for each precinct,’ explains Basson.

Using this data, CrimeCheck surfaces some alarming insights like precincts where the risk of dying violently may well be greater than for a civilian living in a war zone.

‘Many precincts are higher risk than you might think, while others are lower despite perceptions that they are dangerous,’ he says.

Public buy-in

Kelly Anderson of news24.com reiterates that CrimeCheck is not an ‘app’, but a website, which has by the first week in August attracted over 400,000 pageviews. More than 250,000 users, mainly from Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, have visited the site since its mid-July launch.

Most dangerous ‘hoods’

Areas where residents have the highest risk of becoming victims of crime are the Cape Town Central precinct, as well as Pietermaritzburg and Durban Central precincts.

With a population of 45,093 people, Cape Town Central experienced 7,493 crimes last year. Pietermaritzburg had about half that amount, with 3,728 crimes reported among its 24,246 residents.

Durban Central, with a population of 55,015, recorded 7,573 crimes. ‘We encourage site users to compare different police precincts – the suburbs they live in – to see how safe their neighbourhood is,’ says Anderson.

True reflection

The varying rates of crime being reported are a well-known phenomenon in South Africa and elsewhere, so there will sometimes be an inconsistency of reported crimes across areas.

‘Some areas record crimes at far greater rates than others. Wealthier neighbourhoods might report burglaries and theft more frequently, for insurance or related purposes. It is also well-known that sexual offences are widely under-reported.

‘Murder is the one crime type that is consistently reported, providing room for useful comparisons across many areas. That said, the official crime statistics are the only data available to us and we need to view them bearing in mind their flaws,’ says Anderson.

Anderson explains the risk gauge is also based on the ratio of indexes of crime per 1,000 population (or households, for burglaries) in each precinct, not only on the numbers of reported crimes.

Interpretation aid

‘If you are told there were 20 murders in a town you might think of it as a high-risk place, but when learning that a million people live there, you will realise your chances of becoming a murder victim is relatively low, due to population size.

‘If, however, 20 murders occur among only 50,000 people, the risk of becoming a murder victim is far greater,’ Anderson concludes.

Visit crimecheck.news24.com to check the stats in your ‘hood’.