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The SA Institute of Race Relations says over 3.3 million crimes occur every year but half of them go unreported.
The Institute says data from Stats SA's victims survey in 2011 showed that households and individuals experienced at least 3.3 million crimes, however, 1.7 million, or 52% of these, were not reported to the police in that year.
Researcher Lucy Holborn says these figures include 82 000 unreported cases of house robbery and 8 000 unreported car hijackings.
She adds that expenditure on private security rose from R2b in the 1990's to an estimated R50b in 2011.
"In our research we pad this with looking at the private security industry which we know has grown enormously in the last decade. We are suggesting that this shows a picture of people having less faith in police not bothering to report crime and using private security as a way of keeping safe. There is a lack of faith and trust in our police service in South Africa at the moment" Holborn said.
Holborn says there were also one thousand murder cases that were unreported in 2011.
She says this is equivalent to three murder cases every day that don't go reported.
"That may be that they may be involved in domestic disputes, people know who the perpetrators were, maybe they take justice into their own hands. I think there is a sense out there that even when you know who has committed a crime you don't necessarily have enough faith in the police to collect the evidence and present a case to court and therefore many people are starting to deal with these problems themselves" Holborn said.
