Question NW57 to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services

Reply:

a) (i) and (ii) The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has informed me that the NPA only records conviction rates of verdict cases on all murder prosecutions, and a further breakdown according to the types of murder as well as child abuse, is not available. NPA is therefore not able to provide the information in the detail requested.

I have further been informed that the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development`s (DoJ&CD) Integrated Case Management System (ICMS) does not at present, provide for victims details yet, and therefore the Department would not be able to specify if a criminal charge of murder is linked to a victim such as a child. Efforts are however in place to address this gap. Thus far, a data collection tool for the details of all crime victims, including children, has been drafted, and is now being taken through the stakeholder- consultation process.

The Department can therefore unfortunately not respond in respect to data on child murder charges but in the future the Department will be able to report on it from the Integrated Justice System (IJS) transversal system data.

The Honorable member is therefore advised to request this information from the South African Police Service, in terms of criminal matters.

In terms of Children’s Court-matters involving child abuse and neglect, data on matters relating to child abuse, was not collected previously (for the 2014/15 to 2016/17 financial year. With the roll-out of the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS) this year, the Department is able to provide mid-year statistics for 2017/18 as shown below.

Table 1: Types of cases registered

Province	Deliberate Neglect	Emotional	Physical	Sexual	Not Indicated	Grand Total
Eastern Cape	41	5	7	7	488	548
Free State	48	8	9	1	424	490
Gauteng	263	14	33	14	645	969
KwaZulu-Natal	30	8	19	20	1 562	1 639
Limpopo	26	1	3	1	229	260
Mpumalanga	49	17	8	8	414	496
North West	80	20	13	3	250	366
Northern Cape	19	2			104	125
Western Cape	140	41	10	9	473	673
Grand Total	696	116	102	63	4 589	5 566

The table above depicts the types of cases that were registered from April to September 2017. Most of the cases registered were cases of deliberate negligence, and 82% of the types of abuse were not indicated.

Table 2: Types of abuse with respect to gender

Abuse type	Female	Male	Transgender	Grand Total
Deliberate Negligence	327	367	2	696
Emotional	60	56		116
Physical	54	48		102
Sexual	58	5		63
Not Indicated	2 257	2 330	2	4 589
Grand Total	2 756	2 806	4	5 566

Table 2 above shows that from April to September 2017, 53% of male children were neglected deliberately. The table further shows that out of all sexual assault cases reported, more than 90% involved female children.

 

Table 3: Types of abuse with respect to age

Abuse type	0 - 5	6 - 10	11 - 15	16 to under 18	Not Indicated	Grand Total
Deliberate Negligence	307	171	97	19	102	696
Emotional	34	26	32	13	11	116
Physical	20	25	38	10	9	102
Sexual	7	20	25	7	4	63
Not Indicated	966	1 138	1 523	755	207	4 589
Grand Total	1 334	1 380	1 715	804	333	5 566

The table above shows that 31% of the children that were reported to being abused are between the ages of 11 and 15. 6% of the children’s age was not indicated and more than 80% of the abuse type was not indicated.

Table 4: Types of abuse with respect to population group

Abuse type	African	Asian	Coloured	Indian	Other	White	Not Indicated	Grand Total
Deliberate Negligence	129	2	70	8	1	20	466	696
Emotional	25		6	2	1	3	79	116
Physical	33		5	2	3	5	54	102
Sexual	21		5	3		1	33	63
Not Indicated	1 008	3	97	13	1	75	3 392	4589
Grand Total	1 216	5	183	28	6	104	4 024	5566

The table above highlights the prevalence of abuse cases reported involving children from April to September 2017 to be African compared to other races.