The Royal Malaysia Police has got its strategy wrong
| Author | Yik Koon Teh |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1461355714566777 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The Royal Malaysia Police has got
its strategy wrong: Laws alone
do not bring down crime rates
Yik Koon Teh
Department of Strategic Studies, National Defence University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Abstract
The Malaysian police appealed to parliament to reinstate preventive detention without trial laws, such as the Emergency
Ordinance and the Prevention of Crime Act 1959, to reduce crimes. These laws were abolished in 2012 because
they violate the rights of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and have been abused. Although the legal profession and civil
society disagreed with their reinstatement, parliament amended the Prevention of Crime Act in 2013. This article shows
that such laws alone have not been effective in crime prevention and that the crime rate declined between 2009 and
2012 because of the implementation of scientifically tested methods such as installing closed-circuit televisions, and the
government’s mobilisation of the police to hot spots in order to meet the National Key Results Areas target of reducing
crime. Lastly, the article stresses that effective crime prevention involves a judicious combination of both scientific
research and strategy. The article believes that the concept of Total Defence mooted in 1986 by the Ministry of Defence
should be revisited as a total strategy or comprehensive security strategy for the defence and security of the country.
Keywords
crime prevention, policing strategy, security strategy, societal security
Submitted 06 Jun 2014, accepted 18 Nov 2014
Background
The 2010 Census reported that Malaysia has a population
of 28.3 million (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2010);
the number of p olice personnel is 112,145 (Ro yal Malaysia
Police, 2013). As such, the ratio of the police to the popula-
tion of Malaysia is 1 : 252, which is better than the United
Nations recommended peacetime police-to-population ratio
of 222 police per 100,000 of the population or a ratio of
1:450(Vira,2011).
Since 2009, the Royal Malaysia Police’s strategic plan
for reducing the crime rate has been guided by the Govern-
ment Transformation Plan (GTP), the brainchild of current
Prime Minister, Najib Razak (PEMANDU, 2013). The
GTP, which is implemented under the purview of the Per-
formance Management and Delivery Unit or PEMANDU,
is a ‘dynamic plan of change’ to ensure that Malaysia will
achieve the status of a developed, high-income nation by
2020. In order to achieve the target, seven national key
results areas (NKRAs) have been identified: reducing
crime, fighting corruption, improving student outcomes,
raising the living standards of low income households,
improving rural development, improving urban public
transport and addressing the cost of living. Each NKRA
is under the purview of a cabinet minister who is accounta-
ble to the prime minister.
The NKRA of reducing crime aims to reverse the rising
crime rate and to increase public satisfaction in the services
provided by the police. This is in view of the 2007 Royal
Police Commission Report, which noted that public confi-
dence in the police was very low (Teh, 2009). In addition to
being unable to prevent or check crime, the police were
viewed as corrupt. This image of the police has not changed
since 2007, as reflected in the Transparency International
Corresponding author:
Yik Koon Teh, Department of Strategic Studies, National Defence Univer-
sity of Malaysia, Sungai Besi Camp, 5700 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Email: ykteh11@gmail.com
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2015, Vol. 17(1) 9–16
ªThe Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355714566777
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