Meet ‘Hectis’ – the Western Cape’s new crime-fighting dashboard

The Western Cape Government has launched a first-of-a-kind safety dashboard, named Hectis, that integrates data recorded at hospitals directly to crime incident reporting and ultimately prosecutions.

The province is pioneering a new approach to crime prevention, which essentially tracks incidents of interpersonal violence from the time that victims and perpetrators get medical treatment.

Western Cape’s Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo said they’d noticed that hospitals possessed a wealth of valuable information that is usually missing from police stats.

“People don’t report the crime after they receive medical treatment. Medical professionals are gathering crucial data for crime prevention,” explained Mbombo.

The department’s Dr Melvin Moodley said developers designed the system to be built into the province’s hospital workflow system and it doesn’t require excessive and onerous data capturing by the hospital staff.

“We’re trying to understand the story of violence using health data,” said Moodley. “We can see which months the crime rates are up, the age groups, how and where it’s happening. Using interpersonal violence data, we can better plan, deploy resources and adjust responses.”

The province’s MEC for Community Safety Allan Reagan said they had already started using the data collected at hospitals to determine where and how crime-fighting resources, in terms of Saps, Metro and LEAP officers, should be deployed.

Western Cape officials said they are also concentrating efforts to secure a higher conviction rate.

The current conviction rate for gang-related violence stands at 2%, which according to officials has “emboldened” gang members.

Western Cape has an active anti-gang priority committee, which includes the members of the NPA and Saps. Cases that are recorded through information gathered on Hectis are assigned a court watching brief.

Feedback is then given to Saps and the NPA and in some cases, matters that were withdrawn were revised and put back on the court roll.

Hectis, while still in its infancy, has already surprised Western Cape officials with the depth of information it has been able to provide. New policing strategies and deployments are being put together based on real-time crime stats and data.

The province has set an ambitious target, which is to halve crime in the province by 50% in the near future.

NOW READ: Three men shot and killed in Mitchells Plain