The sense of optimism was palpable at the Sheraton Hotel in Pretoria when South Africa’s National Minister of Police released the official police crime statistics for the 2010/2011 financial year, last week. This was because crime had decreased in virtually all categories during the past year. The total amount of crime decreased by over 50 000 cases or 2.4% compared to the previous year. In some cases the reductions were substantial such as in house robbery which decreased by 10%, and vehicle hijacking which decreased by 23%. Although most of the crime trends are heading in the right question, we continue to have serious crime problems and we will need much greater reductions in the coming ears until it can be said that compare favourably with many other countries when it comes to crime. The question therefore remains as to what can be done as we move forward to ensure we reach that goal?
The answer is not as simple as many may think. This is because the causes of crime are rooted in a number of socio-economic factors such as levels of inequality, attitudes about masculinity, destructive family dynamics, poor education, abuse of alcohol, to name but a few. Most of our violent crimes such as murder, assault and rape typically occur between people who know each other, and are more prevalent in particular social settings. This is similar to international trends for these types of crime and therefore it is now increasingly recognised that it is extremely difficult for the police alone to reduce these crimes. That murder has decreased relatively consistently in South Africa since 1994, irrespective of decreases or increases in the number of police officials or changes in policing strategies, underscores this point.
This does not mean that the police contribute nothing to a reduction in murder. The confiscation of illegal firearms by the police is one of a number of important contributing factors that would have contributed to the declining murder rate. Nevertheless, this on its own does not adequately explain the extent and duration of the reduction in the South African murder rate.
If the police cannot do much against inter-personal violent crime, what can explain reductions in violent crime? When crime started to decrease substantially across America in the 1990’s and continued to remain low, a range of competing theories emerged. The most popular reasons were that crime fell because there were more police and larger numbers of people sentenced to prison. However, these reasons were found to be inadequate when it was revealed that crime also fell across most American cities even where there was no increase in the numbers of police or incarceration rates. Other research showed that there is a very weak link, if any, between the numbers of people sent to prison and the subsequent rate of crime.
Crime analysts therefore started to look carefully at other social factors such as changes in rates of employment and household income, size of the youth population, changes in drug use, amongst other things. Creative economists even argued that there was a link between the legalisation of abortion in 1973 in the USA and the later reduction in crime in the 1990s.
Nevertheless, most of these theories have found to be inadequate on their own in explaining the dramatic decline in crime across America. This is because crime also fell in other countries such as Canada that did not experience similar economic growth rates or abortion policies as America. It is now starting to be accepted that there are no simple explanations as to why crime decreases and that a range of interventions or factors can have an impact. That means that many of the theories probably partially explain crime reduction, but that they do not always have the same impact in different local contexts. It is also likely that two different approaches may both yield positive results. However, they may also have unintended consequences which may lead to other problems in the long run. Already, there is research available demonstrating that incarcerating large numbers of males for petty drug dealing in New York has caused a number of other social problems in those communities. For example, greater numbers of younger males dropping out of school to becoming involved in drug dealing to make the money that their older siblings were making. Therefore, how we choose to reduce crime can determine the kind of society that we will ultimately end up living in.
Of course it makes sense to many of us that hiring more police officers and sending larger number of people to prison can contribute to reductions in crime. For some limited crime types this is certainly the solution where for example, the crime is organised in nature and where repeat offenders are involved. Crimes such a vehicle hijacking, house robbery, and other forms of syndicated crime, can be substantially reduced through good police intelligence networks, solid investigations and the use of forensics to link suspects to criminal cases. In this way, dangerous criminals can be identified and removed from society thereby reducing the numbers of robberies that take place.
Indeed, a reliance on the criminal justice system this has been at the forefront of South Africa’s approach to tackling crime for some time now. Current forecasts for increasing expenditure on the criminal justice system may see spending increase to R104 billion by 2013, almost double the R57 billion we spent in 2008. Most of this will go towards hiring more police officials increasing the size of the South African Police Service (SAPS) to over 200 000 members making us one of the worlds’ most policed societies.
The SAPS is already arresting well over a million people a year, with more than half for crimes less serious than shoplifting. A vast majority of these arrests yield little as the courts cannot cope with processing so many people charged with petty crimes. Already large numbers of criminal suspects and convicts are clogging our prisons. We have a substantial overcrowding problem so that the rehabilitation of people in our prisons is negligible.
As to be expected, the police have been credited for the current decreases in crime even though criminal justice orientated approaches are recognised as relatively ineffective both because they do not affect the root causes of crime, nor do they result in sustainable behavioural change in people who are criminally predisposed. They are also very expensive and billions of Rands are spent every year keeping hundreds of thousands of people locked up.
What is generally not well recognised or understood, is that cheaper and less destructive things could be undertaken that have also been proven to effectively reduce crime. Evidence exists that good early childhood development programmes, social worker visits to homes with young children at risk and programmes to reduce school drop out rates, to name but a few examples, can have a substantial impact on reducing criminal behaviour. These programmes are much cheaper than hiring police officials, and building and maintaining overcrowded prisons. But more importantly, these initiatives not only prevent crime from occurring in the first place as they contribute towards greater numbers children growing up to become productive members of society.
With the ongoing reductions in crime, we will hopefully reach a point in South Africa where fear and retribution will cease to be the primary emotions driving our response to crime and safety. This will provide us with the space to start increasing our investments in the kinds of policies and initiatives that will improve our safety, not through negative means aimed at deterring criminally orientated people, but because we have managed to produce strong and healthy citizens who are able to contribute towards solving this country’s various challenges.
