Much like in medicine, using researched and tested approaches creates greater certainty that new interventions are likely to succeed. This enhances policing methods and promotes efficient allocation of resources. But can these strategies be scaled up across the country and made part of everyday practice?

In 2024 the South African Police Service (SAPS), Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town piloted an evidence-based hotspot patrol strategy in four police station areas in Cape Town. The exercise was carried out with the support of the Institute for Security Studies and Hanns Seidel Foundation. The results were impressive. Violent crimes in hotspots decreased more than five times as much as in areas that received business-as-usual policing.

But these promising results mean little if strategies are not translated into institutional practice. Policing scholars increasingly argue that measuring success should not only involve demonstrating that a strategy works, but showing that it can be integrated into routine operations.

This has led to a distinction between ‘first-generation’ studies that focus on scientific experiments, and ‘second-generation’ research that places greater emphasis on practically embedding new strategies.

Following the success of the hotspots policing pilots, South Africa is tentatively entering a second generation of EBP research and implementation. Rather than just testing strategies, the SAPS, Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town have taken steps towards institutionalising and scaling approaches.

SAPS has incorporated EBP into its Annual Performance Plan and has directed an initial group of 11 stations to adopt the strategy in the Western Cape this year. The province’s Law Enforcement Advancement Programme is also adopting the patrol strategy, and the SAPS, province and city have designed tools to track and measure how patrols impact crime. EBP is also part of the city’s metro police cadet curriculum, with plans to extend training to managers.

However, significant challenges confront the expansion of EBP across the country. In the few locations where the approach has been deployed so far, the focus has largely been on implementing evidence-based hotspot patrols, which are only one of many useful EBP approaches.

What needs to happen to support the broader adoption and institutionalisation of EBP strategies in South Africa?

Researchers globally have grappled with this question, and have identified several critical factors essential to making EBP part of everyday policing. These include leadership support, collaboration with researchers, officer training, access to accurate and reliable data, and cultural change among public safety agencies and scholars.

In South Africa there have been promising developments in this regard. EBP enjoys leadership support at national, provincial and city levels, and police and safety institutions are increasingly open to collaborating with researchers. There is also a growing uptake of EBP training, with the City of Cape Town recently training over 800 new metro police cadets in the approach.

However, more emphasis must be placed on accurate data recording to support the implementation of EBP strategies. This includes ensuring that stations record precise crime location details, such as correct street names and numbers. Reliable information is a prerequisite to adopting evidence-based and data-driven strategies.

Both SAPS and metro policing in South Africa are dominated by strict hierarchical organisational structures that often restrict independent thought and innovation. Effort needs to be invested in fostering critical enquiry and reflective thinking among police officials and supervisors.

A shift is also required among criminologists and researchers, who often lack the skills needed to collaborate effectively and help institutionalise evidence-based approaches. The gaps include poor knowledge of operational practices on the ground and an inability to communicate concepts in plain language.

Researchers also tend to prefer disseminating their findings in academic journals at the cost of building relations with policing organisations and creating entry points for their research. They also need to use communication channels that police officials are likely to read.

When considering the uptake of EBP, it’s important to remember that this is an evolving process rather than a defined goal or achievement. The process entails collaboration, negotiation and dialogue between multiple stakeholders ranging from police officials to crime analysts in various state enforcement agencies, and researchers. These interactions gradually shift attitudes to policing and lead to new strategies, technologies and infrastructures.

By measuring South Africa’s position in the process rather than just focusing on the destination, the country is on an early yet sound path to adopting, refining and embedding evidence-based policing.

Written by Vanya Gastrow, Senior Researcher, Justice and Violence Prevention, ISS Pretoria.

Republished with permission from ISS Africa. The original article can be found here.

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Evidence-based policing (EBP) is an approach that integrates research findings, data analysis and scientific methods into policing practices to identify what works best in preventing and addressing crime. Instead of relying on tradition or instinct, EBP uses rigorous evidence to inform decision-making, ensuring that law enforcement efforts are both effective and efficient.

The keynote address was presented by Lieutenant Colonel Tebogo Mmamabolo of the South African Police Service (SAPS) who leads a subsection dedicated to developing specialised and tactical strategies to enhance street-level policing.

She outlined the achievements and challenges of implementing EBP in South Africa, emphasizing its potential to transform law enforcement. “This initiative aligns with our vision of creating safer and more resilient communities in South Africa,” Mmamabolo stated, underscoring the need to move from reactive policing to proactive, research-informed approaches.

She traced the origins of evidence-based policing in South Africa from 2021, when SAPS launched pilot programs in 12 stations across three provinces. These pilots, she said, provided crucial insights into how data-driven strategies could be implemented on a larger scale.

While the pilots highlighted the potential of evidence-based policing, they also revealed obstacles, including unclear communication, inconsistent engagement and frequent management changes. Mmamabolo was candid about these challenges but stressed their value in shaping future initiatives.

“The pilots emphasised the need for thorough preparation, either through constant meetings or briefing sessions between researchers and stations, to ensure common understanding and that operational members understand what is expected of them,” she explained.

Mmamabolo shared examples of recent successes in high-crime areas like Khayelitsha, Delft and Nyanga, where partnerships with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) tested innovative crime-prevention methods. For instance, shorter, unpredictable patrols helped reduce violent crime while also deterring potential offenders.

Looking forward, Mmamabolo announced that evidence-based policing would be integrated into SAPS’s strategic plans for 2025–2030. The phased rollout will begin in the Western Cape next year, with plans to expand nationwide. To prioritise resources more effectively, SAPS is also developing a Crime Harm Index that focuses on crimes with the highest societal impact.

“An important message that we as the South African Police Service take from our evidence-based colleagues is that policing is not an exclusive responsibility, but rather inclusive of the whole civil society,” Mmamabolo concluded, urging researchers, community leaders and civil society to work together in creating sustainable solutions.

The conference featured several expert presentations that broadened the conversation about evidence-based crime prevention. Professor Gregory Breetzke emphasized the importance of spatial analysis in understanding crime patterns. His research revealed that crime often clusters in specific neighbourhoods or even individual streets, challenging the perception of its widespread distribution. However, he noted that South Africa’s crime mapping efforts face significant challenges, including outdated data systems and a lack of granularity. “Addressing these gaps is essential to understanding and preventing crime effectively,” Breetzke argued.

Professor Tshimangadzo Magadze brought attention to rural crime prevention, highlighting how theories like Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) are often tailored to urban contexts and neglect rural areas. He discussed how poor infrastructure, lack of lighting and inadequate police presence contribute to rural crime and called for innovative solutions such as drones, community education and infrastructural improvements like defensible space designs. Magadze also emphasized the importance of engaging local communities in these efforts to ensure sustainability.

Dr Guy Lamb’s presentation shed light on the complex dynamics of policing spaza shops, particularly in areas with large immigrant populations. His research revealed that community-driven efforts often outperform traditional policing in reducing tensions and violence in these spaces. Lamb pointed out that xenophobic violence, extortion and mistrust of law enforcement remain significant challenges, but building trust between police, shop owners and local communities could help address these issues more effectively.

Another critical topic was Cash-In-Transit (CIT) robberies, which Dr Alice Maree highlighted as a growing threat to South Africa’s economy and public safety. Maree presented an analysis of CIT crime patterns and prevention strategies, including cross-industry collaborations, technology upgrades and vehicle modifications. While she reported some success in reducing incidents and increasing convictions, she called for the creation of a national CIT task team to better combat organised crime syndicates responsible for these robberies.

Dr John Modise stressed the importance of a unified approach to combating violent crime. He called for stronger coordination among SAPS, local governments, private security companies and community structures. Collaboration, he says, is essential not just to respond to crime but to address its root causes, such as poverty, drug abuse and social inequality. Modise advocated for targeted interventions focused on youth and vulnerable populations, as well as evidence-based strategies to guide resource allocation and policymaking.

The Evidence-Based Policing South Africa Conference underscored the potential of data-driven strategies to reshape South African law enforcement. As Mmamabolo reminded the audience, collaboration and shared responsibility can transform the future of policing in South Africa.

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The emphasis on police visibility raises an important question: could simply increasing police patrols on the streets play a part in curbing South Africa’s crime crisis?

As a strategy, ramping up the presence of police through patrols is far from new – and can be problematic. It has been a foundational element of visible policing in South Africa for decades. However, the effectiveness of this approach is still up for debate.

At first glance, strengthening police visibility through more patrols seems an obvious and necessary means to reduce crime. A higher police presence should, after all, act as a deterrent while providing the public with a greater sense of safety.

But without a strategic framework guiding these efforts, the results may be underwhelming. Simply adding more officers without a clear focus generally wastes valuable resources and is unlikely to keep crime levels down in the medium term.

To make visible patrols effective, South Africa needs to adopt a focused approach driven by data analysis. This is where evidence-based policing (EBP) comes into play. EBP uses data, research and proven strategies to inform police operations. In addition to relying on traditional policing practices or individual experience or intuition, EBP stresses the need to monitor and test interventions to assess their ability to reduce crime.

EBP studies have shown that some visible patrols – especially in urban areas – are more effective than others. For example, EBP experiments in the United States suggest that increased random patrols have little, if any, impact on crime. In contrast, targeted data-driven patrols are more effective.

A policing intervention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found that targeted police foot patrols in specific hot spots saw greater crime reductions compared to control areas. A hotspot operation in Sacramento, California, which involved police carrying out frequent 15-minute foot patrols on high crime streets, showed similar results.

These studies suggest that by using crime data to pinpoint hotspots down to street and block level, police can be deployed to areas where they are most needed, ensuring their resources are used efficiently. However, more research is needed in countries like South Africa, where crime overlaps with acute social, economic and infrastructural challenges.

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) recently piloted EBP hotspot policing projects in Mitchells Plain, Delft, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Gugulethu in Cape Town. The trial involved SAPS and Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP) patrollers from the Western Cape Government and City of Cape Town. The evaluation is ongoing, but tentative findings show positive effects on violent crime levels in the hotspots.

The project offers a glimpse into what a more sophisticated approach to visible policing might look like in South Africa. It is not just about deploying more officers and resources on the streets. Instead, research and evidence must be used to understand where they are needed, how they can be most effective, and what effect their presence is actually having.

While visible patrols can work under these conditions, over-surveillance is a significant concern. Even the best data-driven police strategies will fall short if efforts to improve community relations are neglected. People living and working in areas subjected to constant police surveillance often feel criminalised, and this can foster distrust between residents and law enforcement.

This happened in the United States, where over-policing in minority neighbourhoods in three Michigan cities led to feelings of alienation and resentment. This is relevant in South Africa, where levels of confidence in the police are low. Without attempts to engage and build trust with communities, over-surveillance could backfire, making people feel less secure and resentful towards law enforcement.

South Africa must avoid a one-dimensional approach to visible policing. Instead, a greater police presence must be informed by evidence-based methods to direct resources effectively. This involves using international experience on targeted patrols when designing hotspot operations, and monitoring their impact closely.

Interventions must also foster genuine trust within communities. In Bogota, for example, police combined intensive operations with municipal services projects to improve perceptions of police legitimacy. This approach delivered a 45.6% greater decrease in reported crimes in the hotspots than in the control areas.

Without these vital components, visible patrols may not work and could even backfire. By aligning policing strategies with data-driven insights and actively working with communities, South Africa can achieve a more effective and equitable approach to reducing crime.

Written by the Institute for Security Studies and republished with permission. The original article can be found here.

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