Malaysia crime rates are rising in an alarming rate… there was a dramatic 13.4% increase in violent crimes last year, of which rape cases were up by about 30% and gang robbery by a whopping 160%. [Malaysiakini]
We need to act fast to cope with this problem; it is a matter that concerned every Malaysian citizens, and quite often it’s a matter of life and death.
I don’t quite understand how the crime rates could be soaring sky high in the past few years. Set the crime fighting and prevention efforts aside… I couldn’t figure out how on earth did we managed to produce so many criminals in Malaysia.
Something must be wrong in our education system… not just with school education, but family education and religious education etc. People with proper conscience won’t hurt others even for million of dollars… but we have psychos on the streets that are willing to kill for a few bucks or for no reason at all. It is just unimaginable.
Immediate Actions
What the government needs to do now is to make crime fighting the nation’s top priority.
Badawi should hand over his job as Internal Security Minister to someone who is qualified and could fully commit himself/herself to. He failed miserably as the Internal Security Minister obviously, and there are no reasons for him to hold the position besides his own political agenda.
We need drastic measures to prevent the crime rates from rising further; it’s a snowball effect… if we let the crooks think that they can escape punishment (like many of the cases), they will be more fearless in committing crimes.
We need more police officers. The government is doing something right with their plans to re-hire retired police officers and civilians to take over administrative jobs; it should at least tackle the police shortage in short term while training for new blood.
Lets not forget that quality is as important as quality; we need to improve our current squad in solving major cases… continuous tranings and looking for the latest equipment might help. I am not quite sure but I believe we are having shortage with CSI personnels as well.
(What’s the proper name for Malaysia CSI unit btw?)
I am not sure if installing CCTV everywhere would help though; those snatch thieves won’t be bother much as they are wearing helmets and probably using a fake registered plate… CCTV won’t deter them.
One thing that we are seriously lacking in Malaysia is the strong bond between the police and the public. Police should be seen as friends to the public, but most of the common citizens would not like to deal with the police for various reasons.
The police force need to polish their image that they are serving the people, that they are always ready to help citizens in need.
What the police could do is to communicate more with the locals, hold seminars in major locations (shopping malls and schools for example) to spread crime prevention awareness and to build the community relationship which could be crucial in solving crime cases.
Eliminating police corruption and misconduct would certainly help shaping up their image as well.
Tackle the Core
We need better education system and social environment. Our current education system is focusing too much on academic achievements while ignoring the importance of building moral conscience. Both the schools and parents are guilty of this matter.
I don’t have facts to back my point, but I seriously felt that the criminals’ age has been dropping significantly with the rising crime rate. It’s no longer big news that a teenager was caught in a robbery, rape or murder case… it’s becoming a norm.
The government could play a major role in building a healthy society besides enforcing the law and improving the unemployment rate. We need to be proactive in providing healthy activities for the youth and adults.
Rakan Muda was a brilliant idea to begin with, the implementations probably sucks but the idea itself is not bad at all. We should reform the Rakan Muda or create something similar to encourage the youth in healthy activities.
Take Good Care of Ourselves
Rising crime is one issue that I feel so helpless with; I have been draining my brain to think of what we can do to help in this matter. In fact it has taken almost 5 hours for me to come out with this article… but still, the ideas are limited.
Meantime, take good care of yourself… we probably can’t do much at the moment in preventing crimes in general, but the least we could do is to protect ourselves and the ones we love. PDRM website has some decent crime prevention methods that we can take note of.
I barely see polices in PJ now. That is why the crime rate went up. Probably because the opposition won Selangor, then the stupid Badawi stopped all the polices from patroling in PJ.
Blaming Badawi for this is a very irresponsible idea. Badawi might be a lousy PM, but he is not as idiotic as what you suggest. We simply don’t have enough police… and the police we have are not doing good enough at the moment.
[...] crime should be our country’s top priority, and it still should. Sadly, our political leaders from both BN and Pakatan are more occupied on [...]
[...] Crimes rate is shooting up as if there is no enforcement anymore. People got robbed, stabbed, killed, raped even in broad day light. [Malaysia Crime Watch, YeinJee's Malaysia Buzz] [...]
We don’t have enough police or we don’t have good enough police? As far as I see, there are enough police officers sitting in the police station. They just simply don’t go out to deter the crime. They are afraid too, they are afraid of getting attack by the criminals.
Then I shall ask, what are the police for?