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The proportion of households who report crimes to the police is falling steadily as broader confidence in the police collapses.

This is according to the latest Victims of Crime Survey published by Statistics South Africa.

The chart below shows what reporting actions households that suffered break-ins at their homes took between 2021 and 2026.

The data show that the proportion choosing not to report the incident has broadly lifted over the period to where now roughly half of such incidents are not reported. Whereas 51% of housebreakings had been reported in 2021/22, that figure was down roughly 10% to just 42.4% in 2025/26.

The same pattern is true for other crime categories ranging from house robberies to assault.

The chart below shows the reporting trend for armed home invasion robberies, where the reporting rate has fallen from around 60% in 2021/22 to around 45% in 2025/26.

The same broad pattern is true for assaults, as the chart below demonstrates.

This reluctance to report crimes to the police likely reflects a broader decline in trust in the police. According to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the proportion of South Africans who say they trust the police has declined markedly since 1999.

Those data are shown on the chart below.

Decline in trust in the police is part of a broader decline in reliance on the state. This is, in turn, part of the growing phenomenon of enclavisation, where communities become increasingly less reliant on the state and state-provided services.

That much broader trend can be read in data previously reported by The Common Sense, which show that about 80% of South Africans say that in their own communities people are increasingly taking over the functions of the state.

Policing is moving in the same direction. When victims no longer believe reporting a crime will produce a useful result or when the police themselves are no longer seen as trustworthy, the state ceases to be the institution they turn to when it comes to reporting or combatting crime. Wealthier communities instead spend money preventing crime through walls, electric fences, cameras, security estates, and private armed response, while poorer communities will form local watch groups or rely on vigilantes.