On Monday, the Malaysian justice system sent Abbas Danus Baksan to the gaol with a bonus of 24 strokes of the rotan. A promise of skin and soul searing punishment. This man/monster had violently raped a child, Nurulhuda Abdul Ghani. A girl of just 10 years of age is now dead.

Within 10 days of the crime, this horrific man was arrested, arraigned and now sentenced. It is believed he was not alone, so the investigation and search for his accomplices continue, with similar sentences waiting for them when found.

Is this closure for the victim's family and does it assuage the scar that society now bears, or continually bears, with every reported violent crime against children? And is this deterrence going to make more parents feel that their children are safe?

My verdict is not likely. We have done so little, that we are as vulnerable as ever and the cosmetic treatment is no solution whatsoever.

Here's the chronology of events:

Jan 17:

At 8.50am, worried family members start looking for Nurul, who has not returned from running an errand to the local store. Before 9.20am, family members confront Abbas at the guardhouse of the power substation. He states that he has not seen the girl and cannot let them search the premises without police permission

At 9.20am, Abbas (and others?) begin(s) to rape Nurul. After 1pm, a policeman enters the premises despite Abbas' protestations, scuffles with him and finds Nurul in dire straits. Abbas is apprehended. Later, Nurul dies as a result of the physical assaults.

Jan 26:

Abbas is sentenced to 20 years in prison and to be caned 24 times during that period.

First, the facts of the case. The family already approached the perpetrator before the rape began. They were denied access by Abbas on the grounds that they had no police permission.

Having barred the family, Abbas went on to rape the child over a duration of three and a half hours. I am getting a sick feeling just writing this. The family must have suspected Abbas all along, but were helpless, because someone hired a person who had broken the law consistently over the years to unilaterally ensure the security of a hazard area.

The brave constable who entered the premises eventually did the right thing. But that was done four hours after she went missing. The right thing done too late, is that a familiar script?

The police could have responded quicker. And if only police permission nullifies Abbas' claim to shield his lair, then a policeman showing up within the hour of being summoned by the family would have forced his/her way into the premises long before, and Nurul may be alive today.

But the facts are unclear about when the police were called in to help. Yet, most of us are familiar with our police telling us to come to them only when we are absolutely sure that there is a need for police help. Telling them, "I asked all her friends, everyone in the neighbourhood is concerned, and I am really sure it is a police situation!", is not good enough.

The police department often stays aloft and detached from the people it is paid to protect. Poor academic training for constables and even sub-inspectors, if you equate police academies as equivalents to diploma schools, is an abject aberration.

Modern police-work is not about guns and handcuffs only. They are intended to be an organisation that plans and implements adequate responses to security concerns proactively as much as reactively. Information has to flow downwards as much as upwards. Yes, the inspector-general of police would be no less eloquent and exacting as the chief justice, but the average constable has no conceptual grasp of his/her role in society and is incapable to articulate it to members of society at any level.

If they were benchmarked in terms of management, honest consultants would retort, the only reason they have not gone under is because they are being paid by disenfranchised taxpayers, who can do absolutely nothing to reform the police force.

Second, Abbas has been convicted nine times before. I'd suspect that each crime thereafter was more serious than the previous one. The Malaysian prisons system apparently does not worry too much about rehabilitation, just incarceration. What do we have in our prisons that improves the behaviours of felons? What is the ratio of convicts to qualified counsellors, are prison guards trained to detect serious psychological issues some prisoners may be facing, stemming from prison conditions, violence, rapes and abuse, and can prisoner's access education in prisons?

Is there a systematic and streamlined programme to better them? Have we ever had anyone who served a long prison term for violent criminal acts, and then helped on to relative success as a responsible community member?

Those are things worth looking into and very worth funding.

Corollary to the second point, how could the security hired end up being the very executor of harm in the community? Welcome to Malaysia Incorporated, where poor management leads to companies compromising on the low-end needs, like the protection of a power substation.

Installations in residential areas especially cannot be managed without cognisance of the

community in which the installation exists in. Companies cannot claim they are just doing enough to meet their own goals and not the concerns of the community. Company property was secure but a child has been brutally killed in company compound.

Does the company in question have a mechanism to check on the fitness of the staff manning and guarding facilities? This magnifies the issue that the firm did not think at all of the possible harms, they just worried about their machines being stolen or damaged by drug addicts and drunk youths.

If the family did not suspect the guard, then they would have been looking on and on, and the guard would have got away with the crime. Perhaps the police should have a conversation with the division in the company that handles the protection of the substations, along with the security company they are obviously talking to now.

There is clear negligence on the part of the substation management and the security company.

Admitted security companies are market-driven firms. There is an absolute amount that clients are willing to fork out, and the provider will have to get the personnel who will do it for that amount, with ample consideration to the profit margin to be made.

The money they pay; only retirees, unemployable youths and dregs of society would work for. The ethical consideration of having some quality in the service provided, flies out of the window in the face of market economics.

That does not abdicate the fact, a well-trained interviewer would have been able to find out if an applicant is lying. That is why top security firms in the world hire top cops and military personnel - to do this very thing and to co-ordinate the human resource.

Abbas with nine previous convictions must have spent more time in prison than in school, and would have never held a job too long, and would be hard pressed to provide a reference. Or are references checked anymore?

The truth is security companies are generally run poorly. Most clients want the impression of security not the actual delivery of it. The service apartments, numerous condos that are condos only because they have a swimming pool and guards, schools, parking lots and shopping malls, need to provide men in dull uniforms with boots as visual stimuli - a Grand Placebo with outcomes that lack grandeur.

So when you think about it, there are very few places in Malaysia, which are claimed to be covered by security, that are adequately secure. South Africa's efficient and excellent security companies are going to have a field day in Malaysia soon, as Malaysian security companies will be seen in the same light as Proton - stubborn, inflexible and out of touch.

With policing suspect, local organisations inept and baddies running amok, Malaysians are surely closer to paying a premium for reliable security - security coming from professionally run foreign firms.

The system is endemic of most things in Malaysian business. Get the deal no matter what you have promised. The delivery can be compromised when the right people are compromised. Even now, both the security companies and their client go scot-free.

Everyone is just happy that Abbas is going to pay the price. It is not the police department, nor Malaysian prisons, nor the substation owners, nor the security company. No one but Abbas and friends. They seem to operate in a vacuum, and our sense of closure equally vacuous.