All facets of South Africa’s society have suffered as a result of the severe energy crisis. Regular and protracted power outages, which first appeared in 2007, are also driving an increase in crime, particularly street violence.
The most recent quarterly crime numbers have endangered the state of the struggling economy, food security, and health and educational results.
Power outages were clearly a contributing factor in all robbery categories significantly increasing from July to September 2022 compared to the same time in 2021. The worst power outages the nation has ever seen occurred at the same time. Additionally, the police service’s yearly crime statistics for the years 2012/13 through 2021/22 reveals that 2015 saw an initial increase in robberies.
Insurance firms believe there is a direct correlation between power outages and property crime in more affluent neighbourhoods based on data from claims. Furthermore, an increasing number of reports from both wealthy and impoverished regions of the nation relate power outages to rises in interpersonal crime, notably robberies.
In recent months, the police and the police ministry have made public links between blackouts and robberies and other crimes.
According to this idea, efforts to prevent crime are undermined by power interruptions. This is particularly true at night because these measures heavily rely on public illumination. Power outages also reduce the efficiency of law enforcement by limiting patrols and other police services.
Crime and load shedding
The hypothesis of crime prevention via environmental design is useful. Target hardening and visibility and monitoring are its two main tactics.
The idea behind surveillance and visibility is to deter criminals from robbing people in public places where their acts would be easily visible by others (“eyes on the street”) and they may be recognised and apprehended by police.
Regular and visible police patrols, especially when focused on crime hotspots, have been demonstrated to be an effective crime prevention strategy by systematic evaluations of policing studies. Obviously, during blackouts, cops cannot patrol effectively at night. The job of South Africa’s police is now riskier as a result.
No quick fixes
Other than excluding high-crime regions from the outages, there are no realistic short- to medium-term crime prevention measures that the authorities may explore. In light of the serious electrical situation, that might not be feasible.