Fascinating study on how weather affects crime in SA

By Felicity Duncan

Researchers at the University of Pretoria have published an intriguing study of how the weather affects patterns of crime in South Africa. They focused on Tshwane and looked at whether crime levels varied with the weather – they were particularly interested in the impact of heat and rain.

Their findings, which are in line with what has been found elsewhere in the world, are very interesting. They found that, compared to cold days, violent crimes increased by 50% on hot days, while sexual crimes increased by 41% and property crime by 12%. They also found that both violent and sexual crimes in Tshwane decreased on rainy days – surprisingly, property crime increased slightly on heavy rainfall days, though only by 2%.

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