Malaysia has stopped providing crime statistics to the UN, says The New York Times

The Malaysian government stopped submitting crime statistics to the United Nations, according to a New York Times report.

The publication said that the official dealing with gathering crime statistics at the organisation had confirmed the information.

“The Malaysian government has also stopped providing crime statistics to the United Nations, according to Enrico Bisogno, the official responsible for compiling crime data at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,” said the report.

Not only that, the NYT brought up the issue of manipulation of statistics by government officials.

“Critics note that, after years of providing the public with data on murders, rapes, thefts and other crimes, the government has changed the way it presents crime statistics, focusing on what it calls “index crimes” rather than giving a detailed accounting,” it added.

The NYT, however, managed to get the official breakdown of statistics that showed homicide cases had remained afloat at about 600 a year.

“The data also show wide swings in some categories of crime, including a reduction in robberies using a firearm to 17 cases in 2012, from 722 cases nationwide in 2000. Another category, gang robbery, fell to 110 cases in 2012, from a high of 1,809 in 2010,” it said.

“One crime that did show a steep rise was rape, with the number of reported rapes doubling to 2,964 cases from 2000 to 2012.”

The actual number of crimes, however, could be higher based on the NYT report.

It quoted criminologist Teh Yik Koon from Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM) as saying that "there are a lot of people not reporting crimes because they feel there's nothing the police can do".

The United States Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had also reacted to concerns over crime rates by sending out a warning to American expatriates that read “Remember to carry your backpack or purse on the shoulder AWAY from the road to prevent having it snatched by motorbikers”.

The root cause to the problematic crime rates has been attributed to poverty as the NYT quoted a professor at UPNM as saying that economic inequality had caused more Indians to turn to criminal activities.

“I still believe that poverty is the root cause of this,” Professor Ahmad Ghazali Abu Hassan told the NYT.