On Wednesday, Bukit Aman's Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division (D11) principal assistant director Siti Kamsiah Hassan was reported as saying that Selangor has the highest number of sexual crimes in the last three years.
While she did not mention the numbers, the relevant data can be found in the Statistics Department’s (DOSM) annual crime statistics reports.
The latest report was published in November last year and provides data on crime for 2022. Data for 2020 and 2021 are also provided in the report to enable comparison.
According to the report, there were 3,102 reported cases of sexual crimes in Malaysia in 2020, rising steadily to 3,179 cases in 2021 and 3,303 cases in 2022. This amounts to an incidence rate of 10.1 cases per 100,000 population in 2022.
About half of these crimes are perpetrated against those below the age of 18, but the proportion of underaged victims is much higher when it comes to the more serious offences such as rape (85.6 percent in 2022) and incest (89.0 percent in 2022).
In other words, there are 8.7 sexual crimes reported in Malaysia each day, with 4.1 of them being a rape or incest case perpetrated against a child.
At the state level, the lion’s share of these cases is recorded in Selangor with 807 cases (24.4 percent) in 2022 alone. Siti Kamsiah attributed this to Selangor’s high level of development, high mobility with residents from neighbouring states and territories, and other factors.
“Selangor, as a developed state with widespread internet access, has numerous facilities such as universities and prisons, and several sexual crimes are also reported here,” she was quoted as saying by Bernama during a town hall meeting at the Selangor Contingent Police Headquarters.
The cases recorded in Selangor in 2022 are nearly as many as the case numbers in the next three highest states and territories combined, namely Sabah and Labuan (300 cases), Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya (283 cases), and Johor (269 cases).
Perlis, which has the smallest population, has the fewest cases reported (45 cases).
The DOSM report groups Labuan cases together with Sabah, and Putrajaya cases with Kuala Lumpur. The case numbers in Selangor are similarly high compared to other states in the previous years.
The DOSM appears to be at odds with Siti Kamsiah’s assertion that the numbers in Johor in the last three years “follow closely” to that of Selangor. However, the statistics for 2023 are not yet publicly available and therefore not included in this analysis.
Population size
Another way to look at crime statistics is to account for a jurisdiction’s population size, based on the premise that a larger population means having to deal with more cases.
From this perspective, the incidence of sexual crimes throughout Malaysia is 10.10 cases per 100,000 population. The top three are Perlis (15.53 per 100,000), Penang (15.16 per 100,000), and Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya (13.62 per 100,000).
Selangor ranks sixth at 11.45 cases per 100,000 population, while the lowest is Johor with 6.68 cases per 100,000 population.
It should be noted that since the data pertains only to cases that have been reported to the police, the numbers are confounded by victims’ willingness to seek police intervention and is therefore not necessarily a true reflection of sexual crimes in Malaysia.
The real number of cases is likely to be higher.
Under-reporting has been a longstanding issue when it comes to tackling sexual violence and exploitation.
A variety of factors such as stigma and familial pressure can lead to victims choosing to suffer in silence rather than resorting to the criminal justice system. - Mkini
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