The Best Police Force in the World Will Not Bring down a High Crime Rate in a Materialistic Society

The increasing crime rate in a rapidly developing country like Malaysia has caused its citizens to feel unsafe. The Malaysian Government has to increase the police force and review its training programmes. This paper argues that even with the best trained police force, the crime rate will remain high. This is due to the highly capitalistic and materialistic culture of the Malaysian society that has led to the occurrence of elements of Robert Merton's (1938) theory of Anomie — excessive emphasis on monetary goals regardless of the moral status of the means used to achieve them. Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld's (2001) Institutional-Anomie theory states that anomic pressure arises when there is an overemphasis on the market ethic that undermines the regulatory power of social norms. This results in individuals feeling an overriding pressure to achieve and at the same time being confronted with weak normative restraints on legitimate means to achieve. The two theories suggest that certain cultural conditions, in combination with certain structural conditions, generate anomie and a high crime rate. At present, Malaysia's capitalistic and materialistic culture has generated cultural and structural conditions that are highly conducive to a high crime rate. Increasing the police force and improving policing will not be enough to reduce the high crime rate.