Our deputy speaker Muhammad Abdullah's rejection of the motion to debate crime cases because it was neither urgent nor specific (because the police solved Canny Ong's case) will draw ire. People will say what else could be more urgent.

But even as women parliamentarians urge the police to declare war against crime, the papers report that another female factory worker had been abducted from her hostel and gang-raped.

Yet in a perverse way, the deputy speaker is probably right to feel that the rising crime rate in this country is a social and structural problem that won't be so easily addressed by debate in the wake of the cathartic experience of Canny Ong's case.

Like any other act, crime is function of desire to commit it and the opportunity. So the strategy of any war against crime must be targeted at reducing both opportunity and desire for it.

On these aspects, police has submitted a proposal to City Hall on how to make building owners improve security at complexes.

But much will also depend on allocation of more resources to beef up the police force so that there are more street patrols by both uniformed as well as plainclothes policemen. In the Canny Ong case, police could not initially connect the car that sped off with the abduction because of "computer breakdown".

More resources will therefore not only include greater personnel numbers but also equipment to facilitate crime detection and prevention. Also better system of profiling and monitoring repeat offenders.

Sometimes it is not quantity but quality of personnel recruited in the police force. If one pays peanuts, one hires monkeys more interested in seeking out opportunities to take bribes rather than prevent or solve crime.

Indeed it will aggravate the crime situation if some members of the authorities form 'smart partnerships' with crime lords, VCD software pirates, and human traffickers who get tipped off or are being protected. Or police officers who take advantage of female detainees in lockups.

There are also not enough resources being channelled to prisons rehabilitation, where overcrowding has become a problem.

Not enough attention is given to better pay, higher standards of recruitment and a representative multiracial composition of the force that can forge cooperation and identification with the various communities at large.

Non-Malays shy away from joining the force. The problem is structural because it has everything to do with perceived racial policies that plague other areas of education and civil service within the larger society.

Another aspect is education. People, from young, have to be taught to respect other people's rights. With racial polarisation, our youngsters who do not mix freely with peers from other communities - as did their fathers and grandfathers - but are rather inculcated with values of being suspicions of others.

Also the marginalisation of English in the education system for the last three decades have robbed many youth from becoming useful in the commercial sector. When they can only get low end jobs or remain jobless, what do you expect them to do but flirt with crime?

Other structural problems are attitudes towards women and breakdown in families and family values.

Suffice to say a lot of these problems are "structural" beyond what we could immediately address if political will is wanting.

We all know that crime rates have gone up as greater number of undocumented people have poured into the country looking for work. The construction and plantation industries require temporary and cheap labour, but Malaysians don't want the job.

They are not citizens and their particulars are not registered with the national registration department. They are not deterred from committing crimes when they know it is not easy for authorities to catch them without particulars.

So it is fine with talking about beefing up the police force but when it comes to the root causes of crime, these need to be addressed.

I am not optimistic because so much of it are structural problems - racial and religious divisions, corruption - rooted in our society that without any political will, crime rates will rise as nation develops, not drop.