Category: Society

Categories
Politics & government Society

[2574] Declining crime rate may not be enough

The statistics show that total crime in general has been declining since 2009, according to PEMANDU. Yet many members of the public distrust the statistics and insist that they do not feel what the statistics suggest. Others in the wild, wild world of cyberspace, where discussions can be very unrefined, openly call those in authority outright liars, which is not the first time that has happened. Suffice to say those in the government are frustrated at incredulity exhibited by many members of the public towards the official narrative of declining crime.

Idris Jala, the head of PEMANDU, cited an article entitled ”Cockeyed optimists” in The Economist some time ago. The message of the article, among others, is that perception lags behind actual crime statistics. The article referred to the United Kingdom to support its claim. In short, Idris Jala was defending the statistics amid widespread disbelief. He tried to rationalize the seemingly contradictory signals inferred from the reported crime statistics and public perception of the level of crime within the society, and he hoped others believed it. If he had not hoped, he would not have shared his rationalization in the first place.

Eugene Tan, a PEMANDU director, was clearer in delivering the same message. ”Changes in perception do not immediately follow changes on the ground. And even when people fear crime less and perception changes, the change is slower than the actual reduction of cases,” he reportedly said.

Crime may be falling. Or at least the reported official crime statistics are declining. And it may be true that perception lags behind crime rate.

Or it may be that falling crime rate itself is not the real concern. Maybe, the actual issue is that the public tolerates only so much crime.

It can be that is a maximum level of crime that the public can endure while maintaining their composure. If total crime is above the level in general, then the public will complain loudly about the performance of the authority in tackling crime. If total crime is below that level, then maybe it will ease the public.

If it is indeed true that there is a ceiling that the public tolerates, then the question is not whether the total crime has been falling. The whole new hypothesis makes the point on declining crime statistics somewhat redundant. The trend itself becomes of little comfort to the public and is of little value in improving public sentiment with respect to crime and overall safety of self, their loved ones and property.

Instead of focusing on whether the crime rate has fallen — conditional on the truth value of the assumption of comfort ceiling — the relevant concern now takes a slightly different form. The question now is whether total crime has fallen low enough?

Taking the continuing public dissatisfaction within this new context, then the answer seems to be no. It appears that there is still some way to go before the public is satisfied with the level of crime within our society.

So, the alternative way to convince that public with issues regarding general crime is to identify the ceiling, compare the total crime to the ceiling and work towards pushing total crime below that.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malaysian Insider on August 3 2012.

Categories
Economics Society

[2573] A pretty sizable legal migration into Malaysia between 2000 and 2010

I was reading, or rather re-reading, the Economic Transformation Program and I was a bit obsessed with its projection of 3.3 million total new jobs between whenever the program was supposed to begin up to year 2020. The figure sounds a bit too optimistic that I do not think there will enough workers to take up the jobs, especially  the geometric average growth between 2000 and 2010 was just below 2.0% per year and when population growth for 2010 was at the measly 1.5% per year. The population growth rate is slowing down.

So, I did a bit of investigation and was planning to do some back-of-the-envelope modeling until a different but related matter attracted my attention. It is the population profile for Malaysia.

The chart was pulled directly from the Department of Statistics because I was too lazy to pull out the numbers from a database available to me at work. It was already 5PM at the time I started writing this and I did not want to stay in the office for too long today, especially when I had to pack my belongings to catch a plane early the day after tomorrow.

Anyway, what interested me here was the population increase. Specifically, population increase according to cohorts.

The chart shows how important (legal) immigration is to Malaysian population growth.

How do you spot immigration from the graph?

Well, under an autarkic case where there is no immigration, it is impossible for a cohort in a particular year to increase in size in later years.

Yet, if you look at the chart, all cohorts between 0 and 34 actually increased in size in the 10 years that passed between the two population surveys (2000 and 2010). To be clear, the 0-34 cohorts in 2000 should be compared with those aged from 10 to 44 in 2010.

There are two explanations that I can think of. One, which is less likely or probably insignificant, error in one of the surveys, or both. Two, which is likelier, is immigration.

That was a pretty sizable legal immigration between 2000 and 2010. Easily more than 1 million legal immigrants in 10 years.

Most of the immigrants were in their prime years. In other words, they were young, productive and probably contributed to economic growth.

But there is one peculiarity. Look at the 65-69 cohort in 2000. In 2010, the above 75-year-old cohort increased. Odd is it not? Or maybe Malaysian longevity is getting really good.

Other cohorts exhibited a decreasing trend.

Categories
Economics Society

[2543] Safety bought through ransom is a cost to society

Amid the political wrangling on Bersih and its aftermath, a son of two expatriates living in Kuala Lumpur was kidnapped. The kidnapping of Nayati became a minor sensation. Twitter was abuzzed with it. Posters were put up across the city and flyers handed out. Just outside of my office in Damansara Heights, just by the busy road, somebody hang a large poster of Nayati, appealing for information and help. Judging by the impressive and expensive effort, the parents are well-off.

He was found later outside of the city in Rawang and it was reported that the parents paid the kidnappers some unknown ransom.

I am glad Nayati was found and I am glad he is safe.

Nevertheless, it must be highlighted that Nayati is one person. The more important fact here is that we live in a society. The handling of the case gives signal to the society. That signal will inform future decision of both victims and criminals.

The “ransom solution” creates an expectation on the side of the criminals that crime pays. That creates adverse incentive.

When the incentive is big enough over the cost of crime (either through the increase of actual payoff or the higher probability of payoff), we can expect greater occurrence of kidnapping in the future. The ransom solution will create a systemic problem and it will make the society less safe.

For Nayati’s parents, the police may have helped them. Nayati’s father has thanked the police. In fact, if I were the father, I would thank the police for their aid despite paying off the kidnappers with my own money. In tough times, any help will be appreciated. And I do not blame the parents for paying off the ransom. No money worth more than the life of your loved ones.

But, from societal point of view, such emotional attachment should be stripped in favor of pure rational economic analysis.

When it is stripped, then the incentive structure will tell us that each ransom solution represents a failure of the societal institutions.

Any safety bought through ransom is a cost to the society as a whole. Call it negative externality; each time you pay, you may make somebody else worse off.

So, from societal perspective, the Nayati case is a failure. It will continue to be a failure until the kidnappers are caught and sufficiently punished to tell everybody that crime does not pay.

Categories
Photography Politics & government Society

[2541] He wants a clean election

Categories
Photography Society

[2539] Crowd violence and police stupidity

I had an expensive bet with a friend that more than 200 would be arrested after the Bersih dust settled. The tally now is coming close to 500. I won. My record with him now is 2-0 in my favor.

In the beginning, the odds were against my favor. It appeared that the government had finally reached a kind of maturity to match a more political active society. The gathering crowd was not harassed and the authorities, apart from closing Dataran Merdaka with barbed wire, were largely taking a hands-free attitude. I started to think that I had entered into a fool’s wager.

There were some stupidity by the police, like trying to drive several trucks right through the middle of the crowd. Some irresponsible individuals threw plastic water bottles at the trucks. This trend would prove bad later as the situation deteriorated beyond anybody’s control after somebody broke the barricade to Dataran Merdeka that invited overreaction by the police force, which fired unreasonably tear gas right into a largely peaceful crowd. With the crowd spanning from Dataran Merdeka to Sogo on both Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and Jalan Raja Laut and to well beyond Masjid Jamek, it is a wonder that there was no deadly stampede. (There was another large group on the other side of Dataran Merdeka, at the Bar Council; Marina Mahathir has story from the other side).

So, I had expected to lose the bet. That was until I saw on the road to Jalan Parlimen a troop of riot police was equipping themselves with their gears. This was probably an hour before the chaos began.

When I saw that, I began to retreat to the back, expecting the worst. I know how it feels like to be exposed to tear gas. I had no intention to go through the same experience all over again.

I did not know whether the riot police was just on standby mode or was preparing to disperse the crowd regardless of what happened. I am more inclined to believe the latter. The reason is that in the morning, plain cops were forming a barrier. The riot police riot in their full gears took over when it was close to 2 o’clock, the time when the Bersih sit-in was to begin officially.

Whatever the possibilities, the crackdown started later than I expected. So, I spent the time exploring the true size of the crowd.

The size was just amazing. This was larger than the first and the second incarnation of Bersih. I went to both and this sit-in surprised me the most. I had expected protest-fatigue. I had expected a smaller protest. I was dead wrong. This was bigger than anything Malaysia had ever seen. Anybody who thinks otherwise is probably a Barisan Nasional sympathizer, or an anti-protest couch potatoes dependent on papers like Utusan Malaysia.

Both my phone and internet connection did not work close to Dataran Merdeka. Somebody told me it might be network congestion. The funny thing was that, farther away from Dataran Merdeka, the connection worked. I suspect a jammer was deployed.

As we all know by now, the worst came. Some fools broke the barricade and the even more foolish riot police fired tear gas into the crowd of thousands without warning. The police could have arrested those whom broke the barricade, but despite the hundreds of police officer deployed at Dataran Merdeka, they chose to punish the thousands.

That made the crowd angry but they knew they were no match for tear gas and water laced with chemical. And so they retreated.

This was an angry crowd. Remember that adjective.

The anger was focused solely on the police though. It requires no brainpower to understand that. It was a concentrated anger against the police force and there were proofs to this. Civilian vehicles were let through. The medical team was cheered on and let through.

The police, well, water bottles were thrown at them. With kilometers of angry crowd, some police officers had the audacity to drive their vehicles through the angry crowd. This was utter stupidity by the police, always clueless about the situation on the ground, despite having deployed helicopters and paragliders in the air, in the era of social media.

The hostility and violence of the minority in crowd was regrettable and should be condemned. Yet, would you, being the sole focus of crowd anger, drive through a road filled with kilometers of angry crowd, at unbelievable speed that could cause roadkill?

Here is a proof of that stupidity and the targeted hostility.

More balls than brain.

The unnecessary violence by some in the crowd, and the stupidity of the police caused a police car to ram into at least two protesters as it was later reported. And the car was overturned by an angry mob. It is unfortunate that that is the focus of the mainstream media, and not the context, or the larger issue of electoral reform, or the lies of political transformation program.