Reality Check: New Crime Hub Provides Better Information on Crime to South Africans
Crime mapping can empower communities and improve safety. All that is needed is political leadership to recognise the benefits of releasing the crime statistics regularly and on maps.
Lizette Lancaster, Project Manager – Crime and Justice Hub, Crime and Justice Programme, ISS Pretoria Office
Given the absence of crime statistics, our general feelings of safety are largely influenced by personal experiences or second hand information such what is reported in the media or by word of mouth. The more violent the incident, the more likely it is that the incident will make headline news or be repeated by friends.
Currently, the police publish national, provincial and precinct level crime statistics once a year in their annual reports and on the SAPS website. However, this data is always at least six months out of date and therefore is of little use to communities for planning or assessing their current anti-crime initiatives. Limited information sharing does take place at a community level through Community Policing Forums. However, such efforts have had mixed success as most CPFs do not represent everyone in the community.
It is worth looking at how technological developments could assist us in improving community information therefore, responses to crime challenges. In December 2010, the United Kingdom launched the www.police.uk website, which provides a current picture of crime in any area in England and Wales for five broad crime categories (burglary, robbery, vehicle crime, violent crime and ‘other crime’). These crimes are plotted on a street level map to the nearest street corner thereby allowing communities to instantly identify emerging crime hot-spots without compromising the confidentiality of particular crime victims. This enables all community safety activists to identify local-level crime patterns and trends on a monthly basis. It also allows for better cooperation across precincts where emerging trends can quickly be spotted. Moreover, the website provides information on their police station, details on how to report an incident and how individuals can get involved. The website has the potential to increase tip-offs to the police and to generate actionable crime intelligence.
The UK government provide this service free of charge and allows unrestricted access. They appear to understand that sharing information with the public will be met favourably and allow for the establishment of better community safety partnerships.
Given South Africa’s continued high crime rates, are South Africans not owed the same courtesy? For South Africans to feel more empowered to improve community safety, we need access to more meaningful data. This technology is currently available in South Africa and can be easily implemented without much cost.
The new Crime and Justice Hub developed by the Institute for Security Studies aims to do this with the limited information available. It was recently launched and is available at www.issafrica.org/crimehub. One of the services available on the hub is the crime map viewer. It free service funded by the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) and allows users to view the crime trends for 28 crime different categories ranging from murder to shoplifting for each of the 1,118 policing precincts in South Africa.
Users can type in their physical address, select the crime categories as well as a year between 2004 and 2010. Users also have the option to select the number of incidents alone or to select the number of incidents per population. A map will appear that colour codes each precinct with the number of incidents as described in the legend. When clicking on the precinct, a pop-up will show details of the precinct such at its name, geographical size and the size of the population. This allows user to quickly compare different crime trends across different precincts and identify within which policing precinct a particular location falls. The user may also view a precinct crime trend graph or a table for any of the categories covering the last seven years. This allows communities to quickly establish which crimes have been increasing or decreasing in recent years and when a trend changed. All maps, graphs and tables can be easily exported or printed with the click of a button. This makes it easy to print out the information so as to share it with people who do not have access to computers or the internet.
The crime map viewer also provides both number of incidents reported and the crime ratio per capita. Typically, people look at the raw statistics and assume that precincts with high numbers are more dangerous. Often however, the picture changes completely when the population size per precinct is taken into account. Precincts with high numbers of people are more likely to record high crime numbers, but may have lower victimisation rates. For example, if community A records 10 crimes and community B records 20 crimes, it is typically assumed that community B is more dangerous. However, if one knows that there are 100 people living in community A and 500 people living in community B, then it becomes clear that community A is more dangerous. This is because there is a 10 percent chance of being a crime victim in community A and only a four percent chance in community B.
One variable introduced into the crime debate already changes our understanding. Imagine the possibilities when crime statistics are not only released more regularly (such as quarterly or monthly) but also placed on a map showing where it took place to the nearest street corner as in the case of the UK. Furthermore, spatially referenced data such as the location of transport routes, street lights, liquor outlets, vacant or overgrown spaces may contribute significantly to our understanding of crime patterns in our communities not only in isolation but as a whole.
Crime maps provide communities with a greater understanding of local crime problems and that of surrounding areas. It provides information that can empower communities to understand crime patterns, adjust patrols and seek both quick and sustainable solutions. In many cases communities may be able to improve safety without concerning the police if it is clear that another state agency could better deal with the situation. For example, fixing streetlights or installing palisade fencing around a park. The result is that communities are empowered as they are better aware of the emerging risks and are able to take practical measures quickly to reduce crime and thereby improve community safety. There is no good reason why we cannot do this in South Africa. The police are already mapping crime statistics on a daily basis. The technology is already available and is free. All that is needed is our political leadership to recognise the massive benefits of releasing the crime statistics regularly and on maps. It is an available “low hanging fruit” that our government should not hesitate to grasp. We will all benefit once they do so.
