Unravelling reality from crime statistics SAPS provides
BY now the South African Police Service (SAPS) should have started collating crime statistics for the past financial year.
By September the new minister and his commissioner will have to present these and face what may yet prove to be an unusually stringent grilling by parliament and a sceptical public.
The release of the SAPS crime stats is rarely cause for celebration.
The 2015-16 statistics presented in parliament showed a 4.9% increase in murder when compared to the previous financial year. The Eastern Cape was even worse with an increase of 9.9% – double that of the national figure.
The murder rate, which is a key indicator of violence in South African society, appeared to be creeping back up to the high last seen in 2006.
Apart from this unfortunate trend, it was also evident that most contact crimes (crimes with an element of violence) were up, ranging from a modest increase of 0.2% for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm to a significant 3.4% for attempted murder. Organised crime, including hijacking, had also increased.
This worried acting police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane because, unlike social crime, the rate of organised crime is a direct reflection of the effectiveness of police action.
To the 14.3% increase in hijacking, the commissioner responded that modern security features had made it harder to steal parked cars.
This may sound like a lame excuse, but the reality of crime in South Africa is that it is innovative and highly responsive to new security measures. Recent hi-tech burglaries in the suburbs of East London that circumvent alarms and sensor beams underline this fact.
The gloomy trends in contact crime tend to steal the show and overshadow some positive developments in non-contact and property crime.
All forms of property crime had decreased, except burglary at non-residential premises.
Crimes related to drugs and the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition were also down.
The decrease in property crime coincided with a downturn in the South African economy, and a period when South African working and unemployed households struggled economically. Is the link between poverty and crime therefore diminished?
Not according to Johan Burger, of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), who believes the economy plays a role in people’s social circumstances and can lead them to criminal activities.
The ISS and many gender activist groups are also unconvinced about the interpretation of apparently improved stats on sexual crime.
According to the SAPS, these figures decreased nationally by 3.2% and saw significant reductions in provinces like the Eastern Cape (4.6%), Free State and Mpumalanga (4.1%) and North West (9.2%).
By contrast and for reasons that are not clear, the Northern Cape saw an increase of nearly 9%. However, many NGOs and experts attribute this to a further decline in the rate of reporting.
A 2010 Gauteng study, for example, found that only about 3.9% of women who had been raped by a partner or non-partner actually made a police report. In 2015, the ISS informally estimated that about one in 13 rape cases were reported.
Another related problem is the definition of a sexual offence which can include sexual assault, rape or unwanted intimate touching. Clearly this wide definition may obscure the relative seriousness of the offence.
The SAPS statistics have long been criticised for weak methodology and willful manipulation, but they remain a unique and important barometer of safety in South Africa.
Statistics South Africa has begun to use select SAPS data (assault, sexual offences and murder) along with its own victims of crime survey and the census to create a more holistic measure of contact crime in the country.
One form of violence not yet fully explained in a coherent statistical manner is that of violent protest – or what the police categorise as unrest.
Academic and NGO research into community protests and xenophobic attacks suggests complex linkages between service dissatisfaction (including with police, municipalities, home affairs and other services) and spill-over or escalation into violence that becomes criminal or directed by undisclosed political agendas or local power-brokers. Notwithstanding problems with the police definition of “public order incidents” (some have nothing to do with protest), it seems that peaceful collective community action decreased since 2013 while violent unrest incidents nearly doubled over the same period.
In 2015-16, the Eastern Cape had the second highest number of “unrest” incidents after KwaZulu-Natal.
Outside of labour and service protests, the violence of student protest against university fees and related “anti-colonial” campaigns seems to reinforce this trend and suggests a new impatience with “civility” or non-violent citizens activism.
Civil society groups have long been arguing for a strategy that takes into account the social and economic causes of crime and violence, and goes beyond policing as a solution.
Gareth Newham, of the ISS, continuously reminds the police and anyone else who will listen that violent crime, “whether it’s murder, rape or assault – is not something that the police can prevent or reduce on their own”.
In contrast, Phahlane told parliament’s portfolio committee on police last year, “What is it social workers are going to do to bring down contact crime? Crimes are being committed by people wielding illegal firearms.”
Officially, however, the National Development Plan recognises “that crime and violence is not just a security issue, but has deep social and economic roots and consequences”.
Thus, the call for coordinated activity across a variety of departments, the private sector and community bodies to reduce criminality and violence, and make communities safe. Last year’s white paper on safety and security makes explicit mention of local community safety forums at municipal level for planning and coordinating community safety.
But local planning for safety is constrained by the fact that the SAPS precinct boundaries are the basis for generating crime figures and do not match municipal boundaries – in other words, municipalities have no accurate means of collating or comparing their relative crime burden.
Another problem is that SAPS figures are absolute and do not reflect crime rates proportionate to population size.
Statistics South Africa has begun to address this by calculating actual crime rates per 100 000 of the population.
But once the maths and the boundaries are sorted, there remains the reluctance to recognise that crime cannot simply be a problem for the cops.