Coding Sanity

There are several online newspapers carrying a story purporting to be from Outsurance, claiming that robbers use rubbish outside your property as a mechanism for marking which places to rob, and which to leave alone. You can find the story here, here, here and here. Don't bother following each link though, since the stories are pretty much word for word. The story is sourced from SAPA-DPA, which means it comes from Deutsche Presse-Agentur, a German news organisation. Well, I found a couple of things suspicious about the story.

Let's think for a moment about this alleged behaviour. First, does anyone honestly think that a thief would use something as ephemeral as rubbish lying outside someones property as a means of keeping track of cased houses? What if the gardener cleaned it up? What if someone switched it? What if the wind blew it, or a dog grabbed it? I'd be willing to guess that most robbers, needing to keep information about potential targets would use, um, note paper? Not difficult to use, we've only had writing for a few thousand years. Even an illiterate would be able to make meaningful marks, and I submit that any set of robbers sophisticated to case the places well beforehand would have at least one literate member.

Secondly, let's consider that using a publicly visible sign means that other criminals now effectively have access to the "intelligence" that the first thieves worked hard to obtain. So, one could start a very successful gang in theory that could drive around looking for the "easy" signs, and rob those houses, and never have to do any research or investigation oneself. Please! Criminals working together? Colluding? These are asocial people at best. I'm not saying that criminals don't sometimes work together, but this implies that every single housebreaker in South Africa is part of a massive, coordinated organisation.

Thirdly, have a look at the burglary figure, it claims to be for the March 2005-March 2006, but the SAPS have only released statistics for up to 2003/2004 (that I could find anyway), and the burglary figures were much higher than that, hell the only province with figures lower than that was Limpopo. This is a completely made-up figure.

Fourthly, consider that there is no person from Outsurance attributed. Normally such large corporations have spokespeople who insist on having their names in the story when they're quoted. This is partly to make it easy to chase them up. I called Outsurance this morning and actually spoke to their spokesman who confirmed that this story does not come from Outsurance at all.

So, what we have is a bogus story that assumes that South African criminals are stagerringly stupid, illiterate, and conspiring together. Hmm, what stereotypes does that fulfill? You know, the problem with President Mbeki's rants about racism being alive and well, especially in the debate about crime, is that sometimes he's right. Whoever wrote this story was a complete racist, and all of us who accepted it without thinking (and I certainly did at first) at the very least still harbor some powerful negative stereotypes. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we recognize it and just practice engaging our brains long enough to challenge them.

Stories that pander to our preconceived notions or fears are like viruses slipping past our defences. The only way to ensure one is not hoaxed again and again is to question everything we hear, no matter what the source.

Update 8 May 2007

Despite numerous requests to DPA, to Diago, to Kat and some others offline, I have still not received a single original source. It's always someone else. Everyone promises me sources, but never deliver. So, at this point, I have no qualms whatsoever as marking this story as a complete fabrication and urban legend. Everything so far has been hearsay and innuendo. It's actually an object lesson in why courts do not admit hearsay testimony. Despite the strong feelings running about this story, not one person testifying to it's veracity can actually back up their claim. Not one.