Inaccurate report

Inaccurate report

The article titled Unreliable police data causes failures in
fighting crime (The Jakarta Post, July 29, 2002) was very
interesting, but it contained some inaccurate data.

The final paragraph said that Jakarta has a total of 21,000
police for 8.3 million population. This means one officer for
every 395 people. But then the paragraph says that "those figures
fall short of the ideal, namely one officer per 400 residents".
Actually those figures are better than the so-called ideal.

You might have meant that the relevant population comparison
should not have been the 8.3 million censused in July 2000, but
rather the actual effective daytime population of over 10
million. Or you might have noted that some of the police
protection is in special units (Lalu-Lintas etc) that do not
provide the sort of protection the population needs to overcome
crime.

Damar Harsanto should look more deeply into this set of issues
and correct the data errors in the last paragraph. Perhaps some
thought should also be given to the role of Satpam and other
security groups in the issue of security and justice.

PROF. TERENCE H. HULL, The Australian National University,
Canberra