Crime rate

The National Police chief recently made a statement that crime in 1996 had declined compared to the previous year.

Everybody should be happy to hear that; but I was not, because there was no explanation of what kind of crimes are declining. Only numbers were mentioned.

Almost every day during 1996 we read about crimes committed all over Indonesia, which are new compared to crimes committed the previous year. In 1996 we had senseless killings, robberies with or without rape, sodomy (a new crime), daylight bank robberies, and of course the normal crimes of corruption, theft and so on.

I can accept that crime rates are falling, but is this a cause to rejoice? We are talking about numbers here, not about the seriousness of crimes committed. Numbers do not give the exact picture. Another possible cause of the decline in numbers is because so many crimes go undetected and/or unreported or overlooked.

We should not only make judgments based on numbers. Perhaps ratings could be given to the kind of crimes committed. For instance, the rating for corruption could be 20, murder 18, rape 17, robbery 15, theft 14, and so on. At the end of the year everything could be added up. For instance in 1995 there were 1,000 thefts, the rating would then be 14,000. In 1996 we have only 800 cases of crime but those consist of 600 cases of corruption, 100 rapes and 100 murders. Total rating would then be 600 times 20, equals 12,000, 100 rapes mean 1,700, and 100 murders mean 1,800, altogether makes 15,500. The number of crimes declined from 1,000 to 800, but the seriousness increased from 14,000 to 15,500.

This might be a silly idea, but it is worth considering. Happy New Year.

SOEGIH ARTO

Jakarta