By FRANNY RABKIN
TARGETS set by the government in the fight against crime will always be questionable, unless "a culture of integrity" is established in recording crime statistics , experts said yesterday.
The criticism suggests targets specified yesterday — such as a reduction in "reported" serious crimes from 3924 to at least 3767 per 100000 people, in contact crimes from 1407 to 930 per 100000 people, and in the so- called trio crimes from 97,1 to 67 per 100000 people — may not reflect real improvements.
Targets are problematic as they are based on crimes as reported to the police, said criminal justice expert David Bruce of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
Police, assessed according to the reported crime levels in their area, can feel pressure to record incidents of crime selectively.
"The problem of nonrecording is a product of exactly these types of targets and the perverse incentives that they give rise to," Mr Bruce said.
The targets were set out yesterday during the signing of a justice, crime prevention and security cluster delivery agreement with President Jacob Zuma .
The agreement identifies eight areas for attention, including reducing overall levels of serious crime, especially contact crime and "trio" crimes — car hijacking, bank robbery and house robbery.
Also included is eradicating corruption within the justice and security sector, improving public perceptions of the fight against crime and securing SA's borders.
Other targets were a 2% increase in the number of criminal cases finalised each year, raising the number of Thuthuzela Care Centres for victims of sexual violence from 20 to 35 by 2014, and increasing the number of victims who attend parole hearings from 265 to 1060 in 2014.
The fact that the delivery agreement signed yesterday set its targets on this basis shows that the government has not taken the concerns about crime statistics seriously, Mr Bruce said.
While the objective of the agreement was laudable , "we will never credibly be able to measure whether the targets are in fact being met or not", he said.
Lisa Vetten of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, which focuses on violence against women, said it is "completely wrong" to base targets on reported rape and domestic abuse incidents. Research from SA showed only one in nine victims of rape, report it. "All over the world, these crimes are notoriously underreported," she said.
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.
