Crime rate

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