Monograph No 3: Policing the Transformation: New Issues in South Africa`s Crime Debate, Mark Shaw and Lala Camerer

Crime has become of central concern to South African citizens. Once a topic for dinner-table conversation, it now seems to permeate every aspect of our society. From the president and his cabinet, through the business community and various actors in civil society, to ordinary South Africans bearing the brunt of criminality, the importance of addressing spiralling crime has become a key issue for debate.

span> The spate of political speeches and conferences dealing with crime, and the prominence of crime and security issues in local government elections, are two indicators of the growing urgency with which this problem is regarded. Yet despite the prominence of crime as an issue, we know surprisingly little about it as a phenomenon.

The perceived growth of crime in South Africa raises more questions than answers. Just how sharply has crime increased? When did this trend begin? What are its causes, and whom does it affect? And, in the longer term, what hope is there that crime may abate?

At the outset, our understanding of criminality is complicated by the fact that we are unable to measure the extent of lawlessness, or its costs. Recording crime relies on a two-stage process: victims or bystanders need to report the crime to the police, who then need to record it. In fact, both in South Africa and elsewhere in the world, only a small portion of crimes make it that far.

The recording problem in South Africa has been further complicated by the historic division between people and police, the vagaries and divisions of apartheid recording practices, and the blurring of boundaries between definitions of political and criminal activity.

Victimisation surveys - a random sampling technique to determine the extent to which ordinary citizens have been victims of crime - suggest that levels of unrecorded crime are substantial, which means that official crime figures only tell part of the story. In short, we are uncertain of the extent of crime in South Africa.

Unfortunately, official statistics on crime are the only ones available. If they are to be useful, they should not be analysed for minutiae and rejected out of hand, but probed for broad trends. There is a common perception, for example, that crime in South Africa only began to increase from 1990 onwards, in conjunction with the political transition. In fact, most serious crimes, notably murder, robbery and housebreaking, began to increase from the mid-1980s onwards.

But crime has increased markedly from 1990 onwards. In the four years between 1990 and 1994 - which marked the core period of the transition to democracy - levels of criminality increased generally. According to official statistics, serious offences increased over this period, while less serious offences declined. Robbery, for instance, has increased almost uniformly since 1990.

But the decline in less serious offences is the result of a recording phenomenon rather than an actual downturn: citizens are unlikely to report less serious offences if they perceive the police to be powerless to act. Similarly, the police may focus on more serious offences while ignoring those that are perceived to be less serious.

Overall, crime has unquestionable increased. Some 60 South Africans are killed every day, and another 2 500 severely injured through stabbings, beatings and shootings requiring hospital care. The approximately 21 000 crime-related deaths that occurred during 1995 outnumbered deaths resulting form motor vehicle accidents by two to one. South Africa leads a comparative measure of citizens killed violently in crime-related instances in a range of countries. Its figure of 57 violent deaths per 100 000 of the population a year is nearly six times that of the United States.

But increases in crime affect different parts of society in different ways. This implies that, since not all South Africans are exposed to equal dangers, different strategies should be adopted in different areas to curb crime.

Thus, while crime in general has increased over the past decade, this does not necessarily apply to all forms of crime, nor do all areas of the country suffer uniformly. This is illustrated by regional differences in crime figures. The Northern Transvaal displays high levels of crime against property, but a comparatively low figure for crimes of violence. KwaZulu-Natal shows high levels for property and violence-related offences. The Northern and Western Cape show high assault figures, yet comparatively smaller readings for theft and housebreaking. The Free State consistently shows the lowest reported rate for all categories of crime.

These regional variations suggest that national crime figures may be deceptive, since levels of victimisation and forms of criminality vary between provinces. For instance, while vehicle hijacking is feared nationally, almost all cases occur in Gauteng. This conclusion is reinforced by local police station figures which show that categories of crime vary considerably between station areas.

Related to this, citizens often needlessly fear certain categories of crime. Indeed, those who fear crime the most - old people or women - are the least likely to be victimised, while those who are least afraid - young urban men - are most likely to be victims. Of course, both the physical and financial effects of crime are often accentuated in the cases of weaker and older victims.

The problem of crime is an intractable one: comparative experience suggests that governments often simply cannot fulfil promises to end crime through a law and order-type `crackdown`. Research also suggests that simply increasing police resources seldom has an immediate effect on crime patterns.

Development, often seen as a panacea for crime prevention as it reduces the level of unemployment, may increase rather than reduce opportunities for criminality. In any event, evidence that the unemployed are more likely to commit crime is ambiguous.

In sum, the issue of crime is a complex one: criminality takes multiple forms, and is driven by multifaceted causes. Not all South Africans are affected by crime in the same way, nor, given these factors, are solutions to crime uniform.

Increasing levels of crime have generated greater interest in the issue in civil society and university-based research bodies. However, much of the work to date, while crucial in shaping the debate, has mostly illustrated what we don`t know rather than what we do.

To date the process has shown a number of weaknesses. Primary among these is a lack of a detailed and reliable source of hard policy data, and also of research capability. In turn, while any future national crime strategy will be in a position to identify overall the goals and directions of a crime prevention strategy, local-level initiatives - given that crime has different faces in different areas - will need accurate and sophisticated information and policy advice if they are to succeed. And, given the changing nature of policing and the research environment in South Africa, traditional areas of concern may no longer focus on areas that are increasingly becoming significant.

In response to the increasing demand that crime, policing and related issues must be confronted head-on, and recognising the dearth of local qualitative research on the topic, the Institute for Defence Policy has recently expanded its brief and initiated a comprehensive research project on Crime and Policing Policy.

Comprising several components, the project - which is supported by the Ministry of Safety and Security - aims to impact on practical policy issues through conducting rigorous research on specific areas that have not yet been adequately examined by South African researchers. A detailed investigation and overview of crime, violence and policing research suggests that new areas of concern are emerging in relation to the future of policing and crime control in South Africa that will require detailed policy work. These include:

This initial monograph aims to provide an overview of the identified issues, seeks to determine the status of the research in these areas, and attempts to map out a way forward for future South African analysis of these new and emerging issues.