Missed Opportunities: The Role of Education, Health and Social Development in Preventing Crime

This research paper by Cheryl Frank for the Institute for Security Studies evaluates the role of South Africa's Departments of Education, Health, and Social Development in social crime prevention. It identifies a systemic over-reliance on law enforcement and a failure to leverage social services—such as early childhood development and offender reintegration—due to budget constraints, skill shortages, and a lack of clear conceptual understanding of social crime prevention within government.

• There is a lack of conceptual clarity within the South African government regarding social crime prevention, leading to an over-reliance on traditional law enforcement strategies and the criminal justice system while neglecting the potential contributions of social service departments.
• The effectiveness of crime prevention is hindered by poor programme quality and limited reach, specifically within early childhood development and primary health care. These failures are largely attributed to pervasive shortages in skills and capacity to deliver high-quality services.
• South Africa is failing to utilize 'leverage points'—activities that produce multiple positive outcomes—such as early childhood health and well-being, probation services, diversion, and offender reintegration services.
• Budgetary pressures, particularly from provincial social security services, crowd out funding for crime prevention initiatives. The author suggests ring-fencing budgets or using conditional grants to protect these specific services.
• Government planning for crime prevention is hampered by weak data. Official SAPS crime statistics are deemed inadequate for practitioners, who instead require regular information on victimization patterns and disaggregated data on vulnerable groups like children and the elderly.
• While civil society organisations possess significant expertise and evidence on what works in social crime prevention, there are few mechanisms to integrate these approaches into government service delivery or scale them up.
• Unlike international trends, South Africa has not given sufficient attention to the role of public education programmes and mass media messaging regarding rights and service access as a means of preventing crime.

APA

Frank, C. (n.d.). Missed Opportunities: The Role of Education, Health and Social Development in Preventing Crime. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/monograph-126-missed-opportunities-the-role-of-education-health-and-social-development-in-preventing-crime-cheryl-frank

Chicago

Frank, Cheryl. Missed Opportunities: The Role of Education, Health and Social Development in Preventing Crime. Institute for Security Studies, n.d. https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/monograph-126-missed-opportunities-the-role-of-education-health-and-social-development-in-preventing-crime-cheryl-frank.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Frank |first1=Cheryl |title=Missed Opportunities: The Role of Education, Health and Social Development in Preventing Crime |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |url=https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/monograph-126-missed-opportunities-the-role-of-education-health-and-social-development-in-preventing-crime-cheryl-frank |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{frankndmissed, author = {Frank, Cheryl}, title = {{Missed Opportunities: The Role of Education, Health and Social Development in Preventing Crime}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, url = {https://issafrica.org/research/monographs/monograph-126-missed-opportunities-the-role-of-education-health-and-social-development-in-preventing-crime-cheryl-frank}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }