Making sense out of crime fluctuations

Comparison of crime trends in various countries is an exercise that will help bring down crime rates. Unfortunately, this is an area of study where India lags.

I HAVE never concealed in these columns my reservations about the credibility of crime statistics purveyed to us annually by the law-enforcement agencies. These reservations arise from the fact that most cases of crime - except perhaps homicides - go unreported for a variety of reasons, chief of which is the hassle that a victim is subjected to, if his complaint ultimately finds its way to a court of law and he has to tender evidence against the offender. Add to this the tendency of the police themselves, in many countries, not to bring many incidents on to their record. This disinclination to register offences arises from a desire to make the public believe that crime is under control when it is actually not.

Also, if the statistics are made to look `respectable', there is the further advantage of the political bosses in charge of the government at any point of time being kept smug and happy. How many police officers would like to barter such a cosy relationship with those in authority for a vague concept of `professionalism', which is something that would require true recording of every crime that is either reported by the victim or otherwise comes to police notice. I, therefore, believe - so do many others who have studied the criminal justice system at close quarters _ that official crime figures hardly measure the actual crime on the streets.

Having expressed my cynicism at the accuracy of crime statistics, I am not inclined to ignore them either, because there is otherwise no index of the levels of crime in an area by which we can gain an idea of the intensity of the problem and the impact of law enforcement on criminal behaviour. This is why I indulge in an annual ritual of dissecting crime figures and trying to interpret them as imaginatively as I can.

There is an unbelievable similarity in trends in the four countries. Crime has shown a decline, albeit small, in all of them. This is something very few in these countries would gulp. But the claim is only of a marginal fall, which should go unchallenged. A country-specific analysis to start with may help the reader understand the problem before I make my generalisations.

FIRST, let us take the U.S., a country where violence in its major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia can scare the wits out of even the bravest. Surprisingly, during 2004, violent crime (except rapes) dropped by 1.2 per cent. Murders (16,137) were fewer than in 2002, although compared to 2000, the last year's tally was 600 more. Rapes registered a slight rise (0.8 per cent). This spurt has been uniform over the past three years. Property thefts also fell. Most remarkable here was that even vehicle thefts were fewer by 2 per cent, a phenomenon that is worthy of notice in a land where people change their cars as often as they change their shirts. One theory that has held ground for most of the past one decade is that the baby boomer generation dating back to the years after the War is ageing fast, and is hardly inclined to commit crime.

While studying the U.K. scene, one must keep in mind the discrepancy between the figures dished out by the police and those by the British Crime Survey (BCS) that offers projections out of extensive interviews. While under the BCS, violent crime fell by 11 per cent during the financial year 2004-05, the police-recorded crime rose by 7 per cent. Drawing a mean between the two sources of statistics, I would like to view the situation as stable. However, to ensure uniformity in comparisons with the other three countries, I would like to go by the police estimate of various offences. Murders showed a 1 per cent drop. If you take perceptions as such, the BCS says that there are now fewer people who believe that crime is going up. If you spend a week in London and read the newspapers, you will however get the contrary impression. This is the most fascinating thing about crime. Impressions matter much more than cold statistics! It is enough for two or three murders or rapes to occur in quick succession to spoil the image of a city that is otherwise well policed. Some cynics say that ultimately it all depends on the horoscope of the police chief. This is possibly why some incompetent chiefs are highly rated, and some of their brilliant and hardworking colleagues fall by the wayside.

South Africa is a country about which I do not know enough to make profound statements. I will, therefore, confine myself to some statistics culled out by The Economist (October1, 2005) from a variety of agencies. At variance with the strong public opinion, officials claim there has been a perceptible fall under many heads of crime. They specifically point out that murders, rapes and carjacking (a favourite pastime of many street hoodlums in major cities, particularly Johannesburg) had dropped by 12 per cent and 20 per cent in the past four years. Also, 23,000 fewer houses were burgled last year. In absolute terms, however, the picture is far from one that would comfort an average citizen. The country reported 19,000 murders last year; a rate of offending that was nine times more than that in the U.S. Rapes amounted to 55,000, a formidable figure that could offend a civilised society in any part of the world. It is amusing that the South African Police explain this away by saying that there is now a greater willingness on the part of victims to come forward to arraign the aggressor. If this is truly so, we in India would like to know how this transformation has actually come about, and what the police did in this regard, because in our country as well, there are cultural taboos that discourage the violated woman from even taking the nearest in the family into confidence, what to speak of going to the police to lodge a complaint. There is a speculation that the anti-gun drive (leading to destruction of 68,000 weapons last year) and the expansion of the police from a mere 100,000 four years ago to 150,000 now have given new teeth to law enforcement in South Africa. By any token, these are steps that are worthy of emulation by any country that has a high crime problem.

Coming to India, we are stuck with 2003 figures, according to which total Indian Penal Code (IPC) offences fell by 3.6 per cent. I will not set much store by this, because the police enjoy considerable discretion in registration of crimes under the IPC. This is why a marginal drop of 2.2 in the crime rate, which measures the number of offences per 100,000 of the population, is also not very significant. But an 11.4 per cent decline in violent crime is something to crow about, although many Indians may not subscribe to the theory that we as a nation have become less violent. Possibly, events in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and possibly the northeastern region, colour our views.

Somewhat in harmony with the drop in violent crime is the fact that in 2003 we had 7 per cent fewer murders. (There were 32,716 murders during 2003, and the annual average for the decade is anywhere between 35,000 and 40,000.). Rapes (15,847) registered a 3 per cent drop. This is not a matter for comfort, because, over the past decade this offence has escalated by 30 per cent. We must also reckon the fact that rapes are one of the most under-reported crimes in our country. The stigma attached to the victim sometimes prevents her from even confiding in her close relatives. Things are no doubt improving, thanks to a greater awareness of rights among women and the active role played by the media and women's organisations.

What do you make of all these figures? Giving an allowance even to non-reporting by victims and undeniable inaction by police agencies, there is a certain stability to the crime situation in the four countries surveyed here, which is significant. One cannot, however, overemphasise this. There is actually a lot of scope for mutual learning. We need to study the most dastardly of crimes, namely, murder, and see how best we can bring down its rate. We need especially to probe the phenomenon of increasing use of firearms in settling disputes, something that is becoming increasingly visible in India.

Here I would like to draw attention to an appealing research article that I read recently in Criminology (August 2005), the official publication of the American Society of Criminology. Studying homicide rates across U.S. cities, four scholars led by Steven F. Messner of the State University of New York, Albany, came to the conclusion that larger cities were subject to an epidemic-like pattern in the occurrence of murders. Also, when an epidemic strikes, it is the high density cities with a substantial presence of deprived groups that suffer from it earlier than the others. The research also refers to an earlier study by an eminent criminologist, Alfred Blumstein, of Carnegie-Melon, which attributed the high murder rates in the early 1990s to the growth of cocaine markets and the recruitment of deprived youth belonging to the minority groups for peddling and transporting cocaine. Interpersonal disputes became the order of the day and clashes invariably led to murders of a large number of young men, accounting for an increase in violent deaths. These are interesting studies that are done scientifically and on the basis of available police and medical records. I cannot think of such useful and reliable reports on Indian crime that have surfaced in the recent past. This is sad. It is something about which the few sociology and criminology departments we have in Indian universities need to ponder.