Police crime stats not official
THE crime statistics released regularly by the SA Police Service do not meet the fundamental principles of official statistics‚ statistician-general Pali Lehohla has said.
He said the police crime statistics had to satisfy the 10 fundamental principles of statistics before he was able to declare them official and release them to the public.
“They must be collected with the best methods‚ they must comply with the quality arrangements‚ they have to be simultaneously [released]‚ they must be released to everybody at the same time.
“There cannot be privileged release of results, they do not meet those criteria‚” he said.
Speaking in Pretoria yesterday‚ Lehohla said this was why his office was working with the police to arrive at the point where their statistics could be declared official and be released by his office.
Lehohla said this did not mean police numbers were being doctored.
“No‚ there is not‚ because I get involved and look at them. But certainly‚ they cannot be responsible for releasing their own statistics because we know when policy feels threatened‚ the likelihood of doing things is very imminent.”
But he was also not in a position to declare the statistics official‚ he said. “Once I do‚ they are going to be declared by the statistician-general.”
He said because they were not official‚ the release of crime statistics by the police did not help StatsSA.
Lehohla said it was acknowledged as far back as 1998 that the collection of crime information was very poor and it took too long to deal with that process.
He said he had worked with every police commissioner who came into office in an effort to deal with the numbers‚ adding that the rapid turnover in that post had resulted in systems becoming disorganised.
“But now recently‚ from about 2013‚ [we have] some of our staff members working for the police. They are now appointed under the police and they are statisticians.”
“We need all the data about the kind of society and so on to understand and deal with crime‚” he said.