We need to address the root causes of crime
ALONG with most Fish Hoek residents, I have been invited to attend a public meeting on Thursday evening to discuss the formation of a Far South Safety Forum. Guest speakers will talk about making our area safer and how to respond if you do happen to be mugged.
It’s a good idea and we do need to know how to react to the way criminals have made many of us feel unsafe.
This is our home and we should be able to stroll along the Jäger Walk after dark without feeling frightened and having to look constantly over our shoulders.
I would urge everybody to read a handy little book before attending the meeting.
It’s called written by two Cape Town academics, John Cartwright and Clifford Shearing, and published by Mercury.
It was produced five years ago, but I haven’t seen copies in our local book stores. I suggest you ask your book shops to order copies.
The book is dedicated to making South Africa safe, and it’s written in a very casual, chatty style, but it contains many life-changing truths.
The authors point out that it’s actually an expensive waste of money simply “reacting” to crime.
No matter how many more police we employ, or how many security guards we have patrolling our homes or neighbourhoods, crime will continue to increase until we look at it differently.
The only way to reduce crime is to find the root causes and start eliminating them. Like it or not, this does mean whole communities have to become involved. We can’t simply leave it up to the police or the city authorities to stop crime.
As long as there are unemployed people with hungry families to feed, they will turn to crime.
When it’s a choice between seeing your family starve or going to jail for trying to feed them, it’s actually not a choice at all.
The book contains several examples of how truelife situations have been assessed and altered successfully, finding the causes and reducing the crime rate. The establishment of the proposed Far South Safety Forum is definitely a step in the right direction if it encourages citizens to look deeper into the reasons why we feel unsafe in our suburbs.
We have to accept we can make a difference, but it will not happen overnight.
And unless we take a broad view of our safety problems, it will not happen at all.
Last Laugh
Three absent-minded professors were waiting at a bus stop and became so engrossed in a deep academic discussion that they didn’t notice the bus arriving.
Eventually the bus driver leaned out and yelled: “All aboard! Come on, gents, I’m leaving now.”
The three professors suddenly looked up, startled, and all rushed from the bus shelter to the bus.
Two of them made it and scrambled aboard, but the third remained behind and forlornly watched the bus disappear down the road.
A bystander tried to comfort him, saying: “Never mind, Sir, two out of three is a good average. You can catch another bus soon.”
“You don’t understand,” said the professor. “Those two came to the bus stop to see me off.”