Daily Dispatch

Show us the real crime data

THE release of the latest crime statistics confirmed what we already knew – that crime is out of control in our country and particularly in our province.

Yesterday, Police Minister Fikile Mbalula announced the annual statistics which showed that the Eastern Cape remained the rape capital of South Africa.

Not only that, but the statistics also painted a grim picture of a murderous province – with the Eastern Cape recording the highest number of murders when calculated as a ratio of murders per 100 000 of the population.

Numerically we may seem to be faring better as a province when compared with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal where 4 101 and 4 014 murders were reported respectively.

In our province, we had 3 628 reported within the same period.

But this is not the accurate picture as the province accounted for 55.9 murders per 100 000 population, compared with Limpopo which recorded 14.2 murders. That is the highest ratio per 100 000 population. This makes sense as Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal are the country’s most populous provinces.

The annual statistics cover crimes committed and reported between April last year and March this year. The police are wont to give us overall figures without going into the specifics and mining the crime data for what it is worth. The information covered in the statistics is in broad strokes and does not do much to assist communities and crime-fighting organisations with specific information that they require.

For instance, the statistics released yesterday show that there was only one bank robbery, in the Eastern Cape, recorded in the period under review.

But what they do not say is that criminals have found new methods to rob banks. Bank stickups by balaclava-clad gangs are a thing of the past. Nowadays criminals bomb ATMs and run off with the loot. The police should provide this information as yet another category of crime, given the prevalence of such cases. Currently this information is buried under another category – which only serves to obfuscate rather than assist South Africans to understand crime trends.

Academics agree that there is more information that we could extract from the available statistics but the police do not have the capacity to do so.

Commenting on the release of the annual statistics, Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said police have “incredibly rich” data about crime.

“If you open a docket‚ all the detailed information of a crime is available‚ and all that information is captured on the Crime [Administration] System and is geo-located.

“That level of data will enable incredible crime-prevention plans to be developed”.

The latest crime statistics came out on the same day that a major drug bust was made in the East London suburb of Vincent. This is the second makeshift drug factory to be uncovered in as many weeks – with another one being discovered in Soweto recently.

This suggests a rise in drug usage and abuse which – when looked at with the rise in violent crimes – could lead us to a better understanding of the main drivers of crime.

Police need to build enough capacity to be able to give us better information on crime.