The release of the 2009-10 crime statistics last week took place in a climate of public uncertainty in the wake of evidence of the widespread nonrecording of cases at police stations.
Regrettably, though, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa and the South African Police Service (SAPS) made scant acknowledgement of this uncertainty, or of any steps that they envisage taking to restore public confidence in the reliability of the systems for recording these statistics.
During the five years from March 2003 to September 2008, nonrecording of crime at police stations had a major effect on the recorded levels of specific "low visibility" crime categories. This was most notably in categories of violent crime that are regarded as less important in terms of the prevailing politics of crime.
Statistics in five violent crime categories — common assault, assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm (assault GBH), common robbery, street robbery (one of seven subcategories of aggravated, or armed, robbery) and attempted murder — plummeted during this period.
These decreases reflected the effect of perverse incentives created by the SAPS performance management system and the government's emphasis on the need to achieve annual 7%-10% reductions in violent crime.
Station commissioners who failed to "meet" the targets received harsh treatment from senior management, particularly during the tenure in office of recently convicted former national commissioner Jackie Selebi.
During the five years to 2008-09, recorded cases of attempted murder declined by 39%. Common robbery declined by 38%. This was against a backdrop of modest decreases in the murder rate and increases in all of the six "high-profile" subcategories of aggravated robbery.
The implication seemed to be that nonrecording was highly selective, having its most visible effect on categories of violent crime that receive little attention in the media and public discourse, related to the fact that they have little effect on more affluent people and that they therefore matter much less in political and, as a result, policing terms.
A major question, therefore, concerns the effect of this legacy of nonrecording on the latest crime statistics.
In this year's statistics, for instance, both assault GBH and common assault increased by relatively small amounts.
This was the first increase in these categories in the past six years. Figures in these categories plummeted by a combined total of 144409 cases over the five years from 2003-04, the central factor in enabling the SAPS to come within reach of the 7%-10% reduction targets.
But if the current levels at which these crimes are being recorded is shaped, in part, by nonrecording, then these small increases may merely reflect a marginal recovery in recording practice rather than the actual number of cases lodged with police. A similar observation applies in relation to attempted murder, which, for the first time in the past six years, did not fall at a rate many times greater than recorded decreases in murder.
While trends in relation to attempted murder, common assault and assault GBH represent a departure from preceding years, at least one of the trends, which in the past appears to have been associated with nonrecording, has continued. Once again, the overall reduction in aggravated robbery (down by 6%) is largely driven by street robbery (a reduction of 10% or 7524 cases). Figures on street robbery have now declined by 39% (41000 cases) in the six years since 2003-04. By contrast, the net reduction in the six "high-profile" categories of aggravated robbery (business, residential, cash-in-transit and bank robbery and car and truck hijacking) for 2009-10 year remains at only 0,2%. Most of these six "high-profile" robbery categories remain at levels considerably higher than they were six years ago.
In the most recent statistics, reductions in some of these categories, most notably in car hijacking (down by 1013 cases), have been offset by increases in residential (348 additional cases) and business (614 additional cases) robbery.
The continuing substantial national decreases in street robbery take place not only against a backdrop of continuing increases in residential and business robbery, the two next biggest categories of aggravated robbery, but also in a general environment of increasing property crime — with crimes such as burglaries at businesses and private residences, theft from motor vehicles, stock theft and shoplifting all having increased.
These increases are attributed by the SAPS to deteriorating economic conditions. Apart from street robbery and common robbery (down by 3%), the major exceptions to this rule are car hijacking and theft of motor vehicles, crimes in relation to which security devices of various kinds play a major role in preventing crime, and truck, cash-in- transit and bank robberies, categories of crime that have been a major focus of crime reduction efforts by organised business and related police efforts to address "violent organised crime".
Alongside the much smaller reductions in common robbery, the reductions in street robbery therefore seem to represent something of an anomaly, as these are also property crimes, which are driven to some extent by need and desperation.
The SAPS attributes these decreases to increased police visibility and better analysis of information on crime suspects. But statistics provided on arrests in aggravated robbery cases indicate that the number of individuals arrested in the 2009-10 year, relative to the number of recorded cases, is relatively low for street robbery (15%) compared with house robberies (29%) and business robberies (23%).
There are therefore real grounds for uncertainty about whether street robbery has in fact declined.
If street robbery has not declined, this would then mean that aggravated robbery overall has not declined by any significant degree. In the absence of clarity about whether aggravated robbery overall is actually declining, the SAPS contention that declines in the murder rate may be attributed to declining levels of aggravated robbery also become open to question. Even if true, it is likely to be only part of the explanation. Perhaps assault GBH, the major driver of the murder rate, has actually declined as well.
But the statistics have become so muddled by nonrecording that we can no longer look to them as a guide to trends. The government and the SAPS therefore cannot continue to maintain the pretence that current crime statistics can be taken at face value.
Rather, they need to engage openly with concerns about their reliability and the need to take active measures to establish a culture of integrity within the SAPS in relation to the recording of crime statistics.
Until it is demonstrated that such a culture has been established, the shadow of doubt will continue to hang over claims of improvements in crime figures.
David Bruce: Crime
– Bruce is a senior research specialist at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
In BusinessDay.
CSVR is a multi-disciplinary institute that seeks to understand and prevent violence, heal its effects and build sustainable peace at the community, national and regional levels.
