Paradox of high crime rates in the face of increased surveillance

A new measurement of Africa’s vulnerability to organised crime lays bare Kenya’s paradoxical response to the evil – the country has high levels of criminality yet it is exceedingly resilient.

Thus, Kenya hardly enjoys the benefits of its long-drawn battle against organised crime because corrupt networks and criminal groups are eroding the gains.

This mix of “high criminality and high resilience” results from the toxic nexus of crime and politics, according to the "Organised Crime (OC) Index Africa 2019" launched last month.

It is the first-ever calibration of organised crime in Africa funded by the European Union and published by a consortium of Interpol, Institute of Security Studies and Global Initiative Against Organised Crime.

LITERATURE REVIEW

It describes organised crime as “everything from a range of illicit activities and actors, from human smuggling by militia groups along the North African coast, to the consorts and cronies aligned with heads of state”.

Although the index hardly provides names, it indicates that mafia-style groups, criminal networks, State-embedded actors - such as corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and foreign cartels - continue to defy Kenya’s strong legal and institutional frameworks against organised crime.

This ground-breaking index was developed through a literature review encompassing more than 3,000 academic articles, some 1,300 policy reports and more than 8,000 news articles.

It is informed by the expertise and input of more than 200 contributors. It looks at criminality (criminal market and actors) and resilience (deterrent) in 54 African countries.

SCORE BY COUNTRY

While the ‘criminality’ score allows users to identify the problem and its scale, the ‘resilience’ score reflects the existence, capacity and effectiveness of a country’s responses to organised crime.

Kenya is in position 10 (Index 5.65), in regard to criminal markets. Nigeria (7.65) leads, followed by DR Congo (6.45), Tanzania (6.25), Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Libya, Mali, Central Africa Republic and Sudan (5.75), in that order.

The lowest-scorer in the criminal market is Seychelles (3.60), followed by Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, Djibouti, and Tunisia.

Of the nine countries that form eastern Africa, Kenya is only better than Somalia and Sudan (including South Sudan). But it scores highly in terms of criminal resilience, only second to Ethiopia.

Indeed, in terms of resilience – meaning the requisite architecture, infrastructure and political capital against crime – Kenya is as good as Namibia, or any other country with low levels of criminality.

ANTI-CRIME POLICIES

This implies that whereas Kenya has well-developed laws, policies and perhaps goodwill to fight organised crime, other factors negate all this.

Countries with low criminality and high resilience include Ethiopia, Botswana, Ghana, Mauritius, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, and Rwanda.

As regards criminal actors, Kenya scores even worse, at position nine – the same with Libya.

Tanzania, Uganda and Somalia have high criminality but low resilience, meaning they lack the wherewithal to effectively combat organised crime.

‘Resilience’ includes national policies and laws, international cooperation, territorial integrity, non-state actors (civil society), law enforcement, political leadership and governance, anti-money laundering, economic regulatory environment, judicial system etc.