What to do when the crime statistics go down? Gareth Newham

By Gareth Newham

Head of the Crime and Justice Programme

Institute for Security Studies

See www.issafrica.org/crimehub for more information and analysis on crime and criminal justice in South Africa.

The sense of optimism was palpable at Sheraton Hotel where the National Minister of Police released the official police crime statistics for the 2010/2011 financial year. This was because crime had decreased in virtually all categories during the past year.  In some cases the reductions were substantial such as in house robberies and vehicle hijacking.  But the question remains as to why crime is decreasing across the board and what should we focus on doing better in the future?

Murder in particular decreased notably and we now have less than half the murder rate we had at the birth of democracy in 1994. This crime continued to drop when most other violent crime categories increased between 1996 and 2003.  Murder is the most accurate of all crime statistics as usually both a body and evidence exists to verify that a murder did indeed take place. Most interpersonal violent crime categories such as attempted murder and assaults started to decrease from 2003. These categories of crime are often to referred to as inter-personal crimes because they typically occur between people who know each other, are often fuelled by local conditions that increase ‘stress levels’ on individuals, such as inequality, and are triggered by risk factors such as the abuse of alcohol and access to weapons.

It is generally accepted that the statistics for most inter-personal violent crime categories are not very accurate. This is because such crimes tend to be seen as ‘private disputes’ and are often not reported to the police. This is particularly the case with regards to sexual crimes, with the police acknowledging that only one-in-three cases probably reach police stations. Independent organisations have undertaken research that shows in some communities reporting rates can even be much lower. This means that changes in statistics interpersonal violence crime categories may be a result of social behavioural changes such as an increase in the abuse of alcohol,  rather than an indication of improvements in the police or criminal justice system.

Indeed, it is widely recognised that it is extremely difficult for the police alone to make a positive impact on inter-personal crimes. The best that the police can usually do is to respond quickly when such a violent crime is reported, ensure that the victim is protected from further harm, that the perpetrator is arrested and that sufficient evidence of the crime is brought before the courts. Experienced police officers know too well however that the most common form of interpersonal violence occurs between males of a similar background and age and that todays victims quickly become tomorrows perpetrators and visa versa.

The police are more likely to have an impact on crime which 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 the police cultivating good intelligence networks, solid detectives and the use of forensics to link suspects to criminal cases. In this way, dangerous criminals can be identified and successfully prosecuted thereby reducing the numbers of robberies that take place.

If the police cannot do much against inter-personal violent crime, what explains the decrease? So what can explain reductions in violent crime? When crime started to decrease substantially across America in the 1990’s and continued to remain low, crime analysts had their work cut out for them explaining why. 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, is any between the number of people sent to prison and the 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. Some creative economists even found a correlation between the legalisation of abortion and the later reduction in crime, leading them to argue that fewer unwanted children meant fewer children would grow up to be angry violent criminals.  Most of these theories have found to be inadequate 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 contribute, but not always with the same impact in different situations. Also, that two different approaches may both yield positive results. However,  what we choose to focus on doing to reduce crime can determine the kind of society that we will end up living in.

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. Indeed, this has been at the forefront of South Africa’s approach to tackling crime for some time now. At rate at which we are forecasting increasing expenditure on the criminal justice system, we will be spending 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.

Indeed, the SAPS is already arresting well over a million people a year, a majority for crimes less serious than shoplifting who are simply released as the courts cannot cope with petty crime. Nevertheless, large numbers of criminal suspects and convicts are clogging our prisons. Already we have massive overcrowding and one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. These explanations will no doubt be credited for the current decreases in crime.  However, when we look at the actual arrest and conviction rates, it is clear that only a small minority of people committing crime in South Africa are actually brought before the criminal justice system. It is therefore unlikely that this is adequately explains the notable reductions in crime on recent years.  Criminal justice orientated approaches are recognised internationally as relatively ineffective because they do not affect the root affect the root causes that  cause crime nor to 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, is that there are a range of far cheaper and less destructive things we could be doing that have been proven to also effectively reduce crime.  For example, 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, 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 prevent crime from occurring in the first place as they contribute towards greater numbers of 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 investment  in the kinds of policies and initiatives that will improve our safety, not through negative means, but because have managed to produce strong and healthy citizens who are resilient against the factors that cause crime and are productive members of our society.