This week official crime statistics were revealed that indicate fantastic reductions in a wide range of crimes. Perhaps most impressive was a decline in the number of murders nationally and in most provinces.
Murder is the best indicator of the real violent crime situation because most murders come to the attention of the police. Other forms of violent crime, such as rape and assaults, are highly under-reported, and it is never clear whether it is the real incidence of the crime or simply the rate of reporting that is changing.
According to figures for the 2003/ 04 financial year, the number of murders were down nearly 10% nationally. In the Western Cape, the province with the highest murder rate, they were down nearly a quarter from the previous financial year.
The police are, understandably, taking a bow. But can such dramatic reductions be attributed to police action? This question is especially pressing for those who are sceptical about the ability the present approach to impact on the causes of crime.
”Operation Crackdown” is the popular name given to the geographic operational approach of National Crime Combating Strategy (NCCS) of the South African Police Service (SAPS). Since its launch in April 2000, great attention has been paid to the 145 station areas that produce more than half of South Africa’s crime statistics.
Joint police and military saturation patrols have been applied in these areas and, in its 2003/04 Annual Report, the SAPS claims to have searched nearly nine million people in the previous financial year — about one in five South Africans.
But despite their resemblance to apartheid-era policing, Crackdown operations have been popular with the public. In recent victim surveys conducted in central Johannesburg and Manenberg on the Cape Flats — two of the priority areas —most respondents felt that Crackdown operations had helped to reduce crime in their area.
Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the respondents in these surveys said they were willing to have their homes searched once a month by the police if it would make them safer. In a country plagued by fear of crime, privacy interests apparently matter very little.
But can this controversial approach be credited with the recent crime reductions? Taking the 20 priority police station areas of the Western Cape as a case study, the answer would seem to be: probably not.
In 15 of 20 station areas (75%), the number of murders went down between 1999/2000 (the year before Crackdown began) and this past financial year.
In other words, this year’s drastic declines make police operations look like a success in three quarters of the stations. But, if we exclude this year’s drastically improved figures, we would conclude that saturation patrols fail nearly as often as they succeed in these areas. In the three years before 2004, the number of murders went up dramatically in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein, Kuilsrivier and Manenberg.
The question then becomes: if Crackdown is behind the recent declines, why did the operations require three years to take effect?
My view is: we should not hold the police responsible for increases or declines in the crime rates. While particular types of operations can affect particular types of crime, nearly universal decreases of the sort the past year has shown are surely due to broad social factors over which law enforcement has little control.
Further research is needed to determine what made the difference last year. Something as simple as winning the World Cup bid could have had an impact as great as the flurries of blue uniforms. Hope saves lives.
The police should be credited for the things they can control, like how seriously they take the enforcement of laws on drugs, firearms, and drunken driving. For the increased numbers of arrests in these areas, they should be commended.
In the end, it is the South African public as a whole that should receive the kudos for being a little less violent last year.
Ted Leggett is a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies