Concerns over
reliability, relevance of crime stats
2015-09-29 07:00
Ahmed Areff, News24
Cape Town - The pending announcement
of the annual crime statistics on Tuesday has sparked everything
from doubt around their validity to questions over their relevance.
The DA said that the 2014/2015 crime
statistics could be manipulated if they were not independently audited,
while the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said the flaw in the
statistics was that they did not reveal the factors behind the figures.
In a break with the trend of briefing the
media first on the statistics, the figures will be released on Tuesday to
Parliament's portfolio committee on police.
Independent audit
DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said the problem with not
having independent auditors was highlighted two years ago when the SA
Police Service used incorrect population figures to calculate various crime ratios.
"In order to ensure the citizenry of
South Africa accept their validity, the crime statistics must be independently
audited," she said.
"The DA again urges the minister of
police and the national police commissioner to commission such an audit, using
an independent auditing firm, lest they release inaccurate statistics."
The DA also believed that government's
decision to use the crime statistics as a measure of SAPS performance needed to
be stopped.
"The system of incentivising a
decrease in crime rates often serves to incentivise under-reporting by the
police. This is counter-intuitive," Kohler Barnard said.
"The focus on statistics as a measure
of performance means that solutions are sought in the wrong places.
"For instance, instead of simply
saying murder has increased, we need to look at the reasons for this and then
target interventions such as specialised crime units to address the
issue."
'We do not expect good news'
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS)
told News24 on Monday that the new statistics could show an increase in murders
and robberies.
"We do not expect good news,"
the ISS's Gareth Newham said.
He added that if there was a rise, it
would show that recent increases were not just a "spike", but rather
a trend.
"It will be a fundamental shift over
the big gains we made over the last 10 years."
The murder figures stood at 17 068 in
2013/14, up from 16 259 in 2012/13.
Newham said the biggest flaw in the
statistics, particularly for violent crimes like assault and rape, was that
they were unreliable.
"Very few people report the crimes.
So when the police say the rate is going down, it means there are fewer victims
reporting cases."
Another flaw was that statistics merely
say whether a category is going up or down, it does not say what the factors
were behind the figures.
Is SA a safer country?
The SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR)
said on Thursday that while the levels of certain crimes have dropped since
1994, increases in armed robbery, hijackings, sexual assault and drug related
crimes had made it hard to determine if South Africa was a safer country.
"That is difficult to answer, because
different trends run in different directions," SAIRR CEO Frans Cronje told reporters in Johannesburg.
Cronje said it was possible that some
increases were due to effective policing.
"[With the drugs figures] this also
might be because of changes in drug use and behaviour... changes in living
standards might also be a contributing factor."
A decline in stock theft figures could
conversely be related to less farmer confidence in the police.
Meanwhile, Police Minister Nathi Nhleko's spokesperson, Musa Zondi, told News24 that briefing Parliament was
the first priority.
"We report to Parliament, and any
performance by the department must be reported to Parliament," he said.
"You can't account to the media
without accounting to Parliament."
He said the previous practice of releasing
the statistics to the media was "wrong".
