The concept of victimisation surveys (also known as International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS)) is well established in South Africa (SA) and internationally. Until recently the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) coordinated and sometimes conducted the ICVS in developing countries. During the past two decades a number of surveys related to crime, crime victims and users of services provided by the safety and security cluster departments have been conducted by various service providers in South Africa. Besides these surveys, three national VOCS have been conducted. The first of these was the Victims of Crime Survey conducted in 1998 by Statistics South Africa. This survey was based on the ICVS questionnaire developed by UNICRI, with adjustments made for local conditions. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) was responsible for conducting subsequent versions of the VOCS, the National Victimes of Crime Survey 2003 and the Victim Survey 2007. Starting with the Victims of Crime Survey 2011, Statistics SA plans to conduct the VOCS annually. The ‘new’ Victims of Crime Survey (VOCS) series is a countrywide household-based survey and examines three aspects of crime: • The nature, extent and patterns of crime in South Africa, from the victim’s perspective; • Victim risk and victim proneness, so as to inform the development of crime prevention and public education programmes; • People’s perceptions of services provided by the police and the courts as components of the criminal justice system. The VOCS 2011 is comparable to the VOCS 1998, VOCS 2003 and VOCS 2007 in cases where the questions remained largely unchanged. However, it is important to note that the sample size for the VOCS 2011 is much bigger than any of the preceding surveys, and the data should be considered more reliable than the earlier surveys especially at lower levels of disaggregation.
