It goes without saying that South Africa has a crime crisis.
Every week, communities are told that more police boots on the ground will solve violent crime. And if that’s not possible, we try army boots as a stopgap. But they do not answer the central question victims ask after a murder, rape, robbery or extortion case is opened: Will anything happen?
Action Society’s Criminal Justice Trust Indicator provides a devastating answer. In our February 2026 baseline survey of 2 057 respondents, 96.4% said there is no justice for crime in South Africa. Just over 90% said they had not personally received justice for a criminal offence in the past 20 years. Some 98% believe criminals get away with serious crimes. When asked where the delay lies, 85.4% said the SAPS and the courts.
The resulting trust score was four out of 100.
It tells a regrettable story of public abandonment. It tells us that South Africans do not experience the criminal justice system as a pathway from harm to accountability. They experience it as a pipeline where cases stall, disappear, collapse or drag on until witnesses give up and victims lose hope.
In criminological terms, this matters immensely because the strongest crime-reduction lever is not harsher sentencing, political anger or even police visibility on its own. Criminologists have known for decades that the biggest factor reducing crime is the certainty of consequence. People are deterred when they believe they will be caught, prosecuted and face a real outcome. If they believe nothing will happen, the expected cost of crime collapses.
This is true whether a country follows a hard-line crime policy or a softer prevention-based model. The methods may differ but the underlying mechanism is the same: crime falls when offenders believe the system will follow through and put them behind bars.
South Africa’s system does not follow through.
That is why the debate about devolved policing powers is important and why Action Society advocates for it. But it is also incomplete. It is increasingly accepted that capable provinces and metros should be empowered to do more than patrol streets. In places like the Western Cape, the argument for devolved investigative powers has become urgent. Local governments deploy law-enforcement resources, gather intelligence, support neighbourhood safety and respond to crime patterns far closer to the ground than national institutions can.
But if devolved policing stops at investigation, it risks becoming a half-built bridge.
A well-prepared docket needs a prosecutor. A lawful arrest needs an enrollment decision. If the investigative function is localised but the prosecution function remains trapped in a centralised bottleneck, the certainty of consequence does not improve.
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) contains many committed prosecutors. Action Society works with them in courts across the country daily. This is not an attack on individual officials, rather it is an argument about design. A single national prosecuting authority, operating in a system overwhelmed by volume, backlog, withdrawals and poor coordination, cannot be the only path through which every community must seek consequence.
Section 179 of the Constitution created one national prosecuting authority. At the time, that may have seemed essential to ensure uniformity. But constitutional design must serve the public, not become an altar before which victims are sacrificed. If the model no longer delivers justice at scale, then it must be reconsidered.
South Africa should amend section 179 to permit provincial prosecutorial powers, linked to devolved investigative powers, under strict national standards.
South Africa needs a carefully designed constitutional reform that allows capable provinces to carry part of the burden where they can prove capacity, independence and competence.
A provincial prosecution service should be allowed only where clear objective criteria are met. Prosecutors must act without fear, favour or prejudice. National norms must apply. The National Director of Public Prosecutions should retain oversight powers in matters of national importance, organised crime spanning provinces or cases involving clear conflicts of interest.
But the default assumption must change. Pretoria should no longer be allowed to fail centrally while preventing capable provinces from succeeding locally.
There are useful lessons abroad. Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption is often admired because it did not treat corruption as a policing problem only. Its model combined investigation, prevention and public education. Crucially, it also understood that investigations must be prosecution-ready.
The ICAC does not itself prosecute but evidence is forwarded to Hong Kong’s Department of Justice, whose Prosecutions Division advises investigators and exercises prosecutorial discretion. The lesson from Hong Kong is that specialised investigation works only when it is tightly linked to a capable, independent prosecution function.
That is precisely the missing link in South Africa.
Decentralised policing without decentralised prosecution is like building a road that stops at the courthouse door.
A provincial prosecution model would also bring accountability closer to the people most affected by crime. Today, victims often have no meaningful way to know why their case is delayed, withdrawn or ignored. Once again, Action Society sees the failure daily.
Conclusion
Years ago, devolved policing sounded far-fetched. Today it is part of serious public debate. The same must happen with prosecution.
South Africans do not need another promise that the NPA must “do better”. Victims have heard that for years. They need a system redesigned around certainty.
When the criminal justice system scores four out of 100, the status quo has lost the right to be treated as sacred.
It is time to decentralise prosecutions.
Juanita du Preez is the national spokesperson for Action Society