ALBERTON – There is very little appreciation for example of the socio-economic conditions that underlie crime. Because of that, there is also a lot of impatience with most people about the way the police deal with crime.
Crime is rooted mostly in socio-economic conditions. Poor people are not necessary inclined to crime, but it is not as easy as that. Very often poor people have to resort to crime as a means of surviving, but it is still more complex than that. In most instances it is not just a single factor that causes crime. It is usually a combination of factors that create crime.
We know that for crime to happen you need two basic elements to be present at the same time. Firstly is an inclination to commit crime. This inclination can be fuelled by many things, for example greed and need. Secondly and simultaneously, opportunity must also be present.
Now you have a number of psychological things happening, processes that come into play. Let’s exclude people who commit crime for purposes of greed. Those you will find everywhere, among all population groups.
Let’s look at people who commit crimes because of their conditions, who become involved in crime as a means to survive. You have a family to support, cannot find employment, then the proceeds of crime become more attractive.
Often these people are recruited by organised criminal groups, who use them as cannon fodder so to speak, and they are regarded as ‘expendable’.
Then there is a more complex group, who become frustrated by their conditions and their inability to do anything about it and start blaming others for their circumstances.
Here we talk of frustration-aggression. They then see the more fortunate people and start blaming them for their circumstances. This perhaps explains the violence that they often use when they attack people, especially during robberies.
The community’s litany of problems are not a policing or security “issue” that can be solved with force. It is a political problem that defines South Africa’s current malaise, because the municipal leadership is guilty of corrosive and systematic dereliction of duty.
Maladministration and corruption have squandered public finances meant to serve the people. So when the “poo poo hits the fan”, most of our councillors and politicians are hiding behind the police.
Now if you look at these things, then one realises that there is very little that the police can do about it, they can do nothing about unemployment, poverty, lack of housing, rural people moving to urban and squatter areas. In other words, the police cannot prevent crime in a direct sense. There is a limit to which the police can be proactive, and there is a huge difference between proactive and crime prevention.
Proactive policing are short-term things that the police can do, for example law enforcement. Visible police and good criminal investigations coupled with good crime intelligence act as a deterrent to crime.
But there is a limit to that. The police manages to deter crime in a certain area and then the crime is displaced to another area. Criminals just find other targets to go to and use other opportunities. The police then must improve all the time.
At present what we are doing to prevent crime is to put a plaster on a “cancer patient”.
The country has to adopt an overall integrated strategy in the fight against crime, that would involve other governmental and non-governmental departments, in terms of addressing those socioeconomic conditions referred to. Unless and until that happens, there is no way that we will deal with those issues.
Reference:
National Academy of Public Administration, Centre for Peace and Justice (Interview with Johan Burger (2008). ISS Offices, Pretoria.
Community Based Crime Prevention (2000). CSIR, Pretoria.
Community Policing, Policy and Guidelines (1997). Department of Safety & Security.
Rising above the rubble, 2014-02-12 p13. The Times.
Compiled by:
Lt. Col. (ret.) Philip Malherbe
Alberton CPF
