Useful sources about Africa

The World Prison Brief’s database provides data on the number of prisons, ministries responsible, prison population rates, pre-trial detainees and female prisoners for each African country.

The South African Department of Social Development website. The site includes the Department's annual reports, newsletters, and other strategic documents. 

This is the eighth edition of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI). The report provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism over the last 50 years, placing a special emphasis on trends over the past decade. This period corresponds with the rise and fall of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The GTI report is produced by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) using data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and other sources. Data for the GTD is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. The GTD contains over 170,000 terrorist incidents for the period 1970 to 2019.

The Council on Foreign Relations' Nigeria Security Tracker is an effort to catalogue and map political violence based on a weekly survey of Nigerian and international press. The data presented include violent incidents related to political, economic, and social grievances directed at the state or other affiliated groups (or, conversely, the state employing violence to respond to those incidents.)

Crime statistics compiled by the South African Police Service (SAPS) which cover 21 crime categories including murder, sexual offences, assault and robbery. The statistics reveal changing trends in reported crimes and allows for comparisons between provinces and police stations.

The World Prison Brief is an online database providing free access to information on prison systems around the world. It is a unique resource, which supports evidence-based development of prison policy and practice globally.

The World Prison Brief is hosted by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), at Birkbeck, University of London. It was launched in 2000 using data compiled by Roy Walmsley, Director of the World Prison Brief.

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) is charged with the oversight responsibility over the South African Police Services (SAPS) and Municipal Police Services (MPS). IPID discharges its mandate by conducting independent and impartial investigations of the identified criminal offenses allegedly committed by the SAPS and the MPS members, subsequent to the investigation they make appropriate recommendations for justice.