Lesley Cowling
Imagine the life of Sergeant Van der Merwe. He comes home after a hard day at work, switches on the television to relax and gets yet another detective drama.
Not only do his glamorous counterparts get to solve crimes in the space of an hour, but they’re surrounded by state-of-the-art law enforcement technology. With a touch of a computer key, they can get information on a suspect. At the scene of a murder, forensic experts give them minute details on the causes and time of death. And going to court is a streamlined process.
No wonder Van der Merwe goes to bed depressed, having spent his day laboriously taking down statements with pen and paper: South African police are the poor relations of international law enforcement.
This is why the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology’s 1997/98 budget, presented to Parliament last week, allocates R10-million to various science councils to develop crime-busting technology.
But what do those guys in the white coats know about the rough and tumble of law enforcement? And can we be sure that they will come up with workable solutions rather than esoteric hi-tech systems that would completely phase Van der Merwe?
Such questions were thoroughly examined by a panel of experts earlier this year, when the councils presented their plans for helping law enforcement. In the end, the panel gave the bulk of the R10-million to the Medical Research Council, the Council for Scientific Industrial Research and the Human Sciences Research Council for a series of joint projects, mostly in the area of information technology and statistics gathering.
The emphasis is on assessment: working with police, victims of crime, communities and court officials to find out what they need. The Department of Justice will be consulted in designing an improved court management system, and police stations will be analysed to see what kind of communication and information technology will be most useful. Alongside developing the technology, other projects will look at training ordinary individuals to use it.
Other projects will collect information on the spread of crime across the country.