Malaysia is ranked 53rd on the Open Data Barometer by the World Wide Web Foundation. This means open data on key categories such as crime are not available. We only score 5/100 for statistics on crime.

Just because the federal government is not willing to provide open data however, does not mean that it is unavailable. Data and statistics are still available via other sources such as through parliamentary questions, even when they are suppressed. We shared this in an earlier post, "Hidden Data in Parliamentary Documents"

Parliament Reply  31 to MP Subang by Home Minister stating that since 2008 Royal Malaysian Police statistics are not allowed to be published in public such as website without permission from RMP.- 10 November 2014 

When key statistics such as crime are found, we make them available as civil society contributed open data at data.sinarproject.org.

Here is an example of the latest set of crime statistics related to sexual and domestic violence, thanks to a parliamentary question by MP Batu Kawan, Kasthuriraani Patto. The original parliamentary question and reply with statistics is available at here through another project to make parliamentary questions and replies accessible.

Sexual and Domestic Crimes Open Data

• Rape statistics according to ethnicity, age and state 2000-2015
• Incest cases by ethnicity, age and state 2000-2015
• Deaths via Domestic Violence by Ethnicity, Sex, Age & State 2013-2015
• Cases of child deaths due to domestic violence
• Number Cases of Sodomy Victims by Race, Age and State 2000-2015

Help contribute to make data open

There are a number of ways to help make more of this data open. One can help contribute tag parliamentary documents which have key statistics or information. Another is to help quickly convert some of the scanned tables into open data csv and make it available on data.sinarproject.org.

If you are interested in helping, please contact us at [email protected]