The findings reveal an unusually tight clustering of responses at the low-trust end.
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ACTION Society's Criminal Justice Trust Indicator reveals a disheartening score of 4 out of 100 in public confidence, highlighting a near-total collapse in trust towards South Africa's criminal justice system.
The apolitical civil activist organisation, which supports victims of violent crimes and their families through the justice process, launched its first Criminal Justice Trust Indicator this week.
The trust indicator is a baseline measurement of public confidence in South Africa’s criminal justice system, based on anonymised survey responses collected through the Action Society website.
The report, titled Criminal Justice Trust Indicator: Public Perceptions of Criminal Justice Performance, measures four core dimensions of system performance as experienced by the public: perceived availability of justice, lived experience of justice outcomes, perceived impunity, and perceived system delay.
“The goal of this research is simple,” says Juanita du Preez, the National Spokesperson for Action Society, in a statement.
“We want to move beyond political promises and measure whether ordinary South Africans experience the justice system as responsive, fair, and capable of delivering real consequences. Trust is not a public relations issue. It is a constitutional requirement.”
Key findings: near-consensus that justice is not working
The findings reveal an unusually tight clustering of responses at the low-trust end:
Even among the small group of respondents, who reported receiving justice in a matter, pessimism persists. Only around 1 in 10 of them still believe justice generally exists, according to a statement released by Action Society.
“This is not a divided public. It is a near-consensus that the pipeline from reporting to consequence is broken. That level of agreement should serve as an early warning signal to government.”
What people are experiencing.
Beyond the statistics, the report identifies recurring themes in respondents’ descriptions of their experiences:
Among respondents who reported receiving justice and provided a timeframe, the median time-to-justice was 24 months, with many cases taking significantly longer.
“In human terms, people experience the system as a series of dead ends,” said du Preez.
“When justice takes years, when communication is absent, and when consequences are uncertain, trust collapses. And when trust collapses, reporting declines, cooperation weakens, and deterrence erodes.”
Action Society emphasises that the survey measures perceptions and lived experiences, not official conviction rates or crime statistics.
However, perception itself is a key performance indicator, read the statement.
“A justice system cannot function without public cooperation. If people believe reporting is pointless and that offenders will face no consequences, the system’s legitimacy is at risk. Trust is the oxygen of constitutional governance.”
The organisation warns that where the formal system is experienced as ineffective, communities may increasingly turn to informal or private alternatives, further weakening the rule of law.
A practical reform agenda
The report outlines a 12 month reform agenda focused on restoring certainty of prosecution and finalisation. Among the priority interventions are:
“What moves trust is not slogans or crackdowns. It is certainty. The certainty that a report leads to investigation, that investigation leads to prosecution, and that prosecution leads to finalisation. That is what deters crime.”
The Criminal Justice Trust Indicator will be repeated on a consistent schedule to track whether public confidence improves.
“This is a baseline. From now on, institutions cannot rely only on policy statements. They must show measurable improvement in how the public experiences the justice system. South Africans are entitled to a system that protects them, treats them with dignity, and delivers real consequences for wrongdoing.”
The full report is available at https://actionsociety.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Criminal-Justice-Trust-Indicator_-Public-Perceptions-of-Criminal-Justice-Performance.pdf