Forbidden subject:

Suicide among SAPS officials

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Published in Nedbank ISS Crime Index
Volume 4 2000
Number 5, September - October

Suicide among members of the South African Police Service is a serious problem. In 1995 SAPS officials were eleven times more likely to take their own lives than members of the general population. There has however been a decrease in the rate of police suicides since 1994. But the situation between provinces varies substantially, as does the number of counselling sessions recorded by the police’s suicide prevention project.

Police suicide is a problem facing many law enforcement agencies. Although substantially lower than in South Africa, the suicide rate of New York city police officers is estimated at 29 per 100000 a year. However the problem is often ignored, misunderstood, misrepresented and under researched. Police suicide is not a subject easily discussed in most police departments or by the families of police officers who have taken their own lives. Many incidents are not reported to avoid the stigma associated with suicide.

Factors linked to post traumatic stress disorder such as depression, hopelessness, substance abuse, moodiness and aggression are often cited as causes of police suicide. All these problems can be linked to stress emanating from police work. Other factors associated with police suicide are their easy access to firearms, crime and corruption among police officials and the police culture which often denies the problem and views it as disgraceful to both the victim and the profession.

South Africa is no exception. Suicide by law enforcement officials continues to be an alarming problem in this country. According to newspaper reports, about thirty officers committed suicide in the first three months of this year. A study on police suicide conducted in 1995 indicated that South African Police Service (SAPS) officials were eleven times more likely to commit suicide than the general South African population. However recent statistics show a remarkable decrease in police suicide rates over the past six years. The rate dropped from 20 per 10000 in 1994 and in 1995 to 11 per 10000 in 1998 an 1999 (Figure 1).

Provincial trends

The levels of police suicide vary substantially between provinces. In 1998 a total of 127 SAPS officials committed suicide in the country as a whole. Of these the majority were in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape provinces.

In 1999 there was a small drop from 1998 levels in the number of suicides, with a total of 122 deaths recorded in the country. Although Gauteng still had the highest percentage of police suicides of all the provinces, it showed a significant 41% decrease compared to the previous year.

There was a slight decrease in suicides in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape, while levels in North West remained constant. However in the six other provinces the number of police who committed suicide increased. Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape lead the group, with increases of 46% and 31% respectively (Figure 2).

The high number of police suicides in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape correlates with the high police population in these provinces. These are also the provinces with high levels of recorded crime. Police in these areas probably experience more work related stress than those in other provinces which could be a factor associated with higher suicide levels.

But the Western Cape has comparatively low levels of police suicide despite the fact that this province has a sizeable police force and a relatively high incidence of crime, especially violent crime. This makes it difficult to conclude that high crime rates lead to a high number of police suicides.

A more accurate comparison of suicide levels between provinces is gained by measuring the number of police suicides per 10000 police officials in each province. Such a comparison reveals that in 1999 Mpumalanga province had a much more serious problem than other provinces (Figure 3). The Northern Cape province came a distant second in the rankings followed by the Free State. The Northern Province had the lowest police suicide figures. In fact the police suicide rate in Mpumalanga is four times higher than in the Western Cape and Gauteng, and three times more than that of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

It is surprising that provinces with relatively low crime rates have high rates of suicide among their police officials. This again suggests that there is more to SAPS suicides than the stress associated with high crime levels and case loads, which is often cited as a cause of police suicide. This raises questions about the distribution of SAPS stress management services in the country and police officials’ use of and response to such services.

SAPS counselling services

In September 1998 the SAPS launched a R4 million suicide prevention project. According to the project manager, Senior Superintendent Anton Grobler, the aim of the project is to research causes of police suicide in order to inform a national suicide prevention strategy. The project also focuses on training counsellors and expanding SAPS stress management services.

The number of SAPS counselling services has increased drastically since the project was launched. In 1998, a total of 5778 counselling sessions were conducted by the SAPS psychological services. This number increased by 67% to 9674 sessions in 1999 (Figure 4).

The provision of counselling, or alternatively the interest among officials in the SAPS counselling services, is fairly uneven across the provinces. In 1998 counselling was most likely to have been conducted among police in the Western Cape (25%) and the North West (20%). Comparatively few counselling sessions were recorded in the Northern Cape, Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal (Figure 5).

In 1999 almost half the counselling sessions were conducted in the Western Cape (43%), followed in a distant second place by the Free State with 11% of all sessions. The least counselling sessions were recorded in Northern Province, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in 1999.

Although there was a substantial increase in the number of counselling sessions provided by the SAPS psychological services between 1998 and 1999, this does not appear to have had an impact on the numbers of police suicides during this period (see Figures 1 and 2). However, since the SAPS suicide prevention project was only established in late 1998, it is probably too early to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the service.

The rate of counselling sessions — measured according to the number of sessions per 1000 police officials in 1999 in each province — indicates that the SAPS counselling service is most utilised by police in the Western Cape followed by Mpumalanga, Free State and the North West (Figure 6). In the Northern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Northern Province these services are under-utilised.

The varying utilisation of counselling services in the provinces would be affected not only by the number of police in each province, but also by the number of counsellors available and the interest among officials in this type of service. This type of information was not available at the time of writing. One would however assume that counsellors are distributed in accordance with the distribution of police officials.

Although SAPS counselling services are used extensively in the Western Cape compared to other provinces, the suicide rate in this province is not significantly different to that of Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal where few counselling sessions were recorded (see Figures 3 and 6).

It is also interesting that the use of counselling services in Mpumalanga in 1999 is five times that of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape and four times that of KwaZulu-Natal. But the suicide rate in Mpumalanga for the same period is four times that of Gauteng and three times that of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. These figures suggest that there is a weak correlation between the utilisation of SAPS counselling services and the rate of police suicides. The data could also mean that because the suicide rate in Mpumalanga is high, police managers are sending more officials to counselling than in other provinces.

The major challenge for the SAPS suicide prevention project is to promote the counselling services among SAPS officials and to establish why the use of these services varies so dramatically between provinces. One way to encourage police to use these services could be the development of peer counselling. Equally important for reducing work related stress is efficient management. Police top and middle managers need to pay particular attention to the morale and signs of distress among members in their ranks.

Sibusiso Masuku
Institute for Security Studies

Source documents

C Lewis, ‘Police suicide is an alarming problem rarely discussed publicly’, www.tearsofacop.com

‘Police suicide: statistics, causes and solutions’, www.angelfire.com

H Brown, ‘Commentary: The tragic outcome of police stress: Police suicide’, www.geocities.com

J Bobby, ‘Top cop sparks death mystery’ The Star

C Swanepoel, ‘Prevention of suicide in the SAPS’, Servamus, July 2000.

‘Project to probe police suicide in SA’, www.southerncross.co.uk