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