NOTES


Published in Monograph No 55, May 2001
The Role of Firearms in Crime in South Africa
A Detailed Analysis of Police Dockets
Ettienne Hennop, Jakkie Potgieter and Clare Jefferson

  1. See the report by A Altbeker, Guns and public safety: Gun crime and self-defence in Alexandra and Bramley, January — April 1997, research commissioned by Gun-Free SA, 1998.
  2. Appendix 2 provides a summary of the statistics relating to firearms as collected by CIAC, SAPS.
  3. See <www.saps.co.za>.
  4. See the definitions on the ISS victim survey questionnaires.
  5. C Jefferson & E Hennop, Illegal firearms in South Africa: Proliferation and problems of control, in VGamba (ed), Society under siege: Managing arms in South Africa, TCP series volume III, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, 2000.
  6. E Hennop, Illegal firearms in circulation in South Africa, in Gamba, ibid.
  7. S Burrows, Firearms take a growing toll on SA, Business Day, 25 April 2000.
  8. A Louw, Crime in Pretoria: Results of a city victim survey, Institute for Security Studies/Idasa, Halfway House/Pretoria, 1998.
  9. A Louw, Looking forward: Using socio-economic data to determine crime trends, Nedcor ISS Crime Index 2(3), 1998, pp 11-12.
  10. M Schönteich, Crime increase partly a statistical quirk, Fast Facts, 1999, p 2.
  11. Representing only one month, January 1999.
  12. Little confidence is placed in the information on the number of offenders involved in incidents of the theft of a firearm. In these cases, the offender and victim do not usually come face-to-face. When reporting the crime, the victim usually cannot provide information on the offender. This figure is therefore an underrepresentation of the total number of offenders. It is estimated that there is a minimum of one offender for every theft of a firearm that is committed. However, in this report, the existing figures are used as presented in the police dockets — although the number of offenders is inaccurate.
  13. The total number of people involved in the incident is unreliable, as indicated above. There is no way to determine the number of offenders involved in the theft of firearm incidents.
  14. A Louw,MShaw, L Camerer & R Robertshaw, Crime in Johannesburg: Results of a city victim survey, ISS Monograph 18,Institute for Security Studies, Halfway House, February 1998.