The conduct of community-based policing initiative in Kakamega county

Abstract

The study sought to examine the conduct of CP program in Kakamega County. It was guided by four objectives, namely: To establish how community-based policing is organized, to examine how personal characteristics of the Committee Members affect CP , to establish performance of CP committees and to find out the support given by the government and non-state actors towards CP. The researcher reviewed literature and found out that many studies had overlooked the fact that communities had the capacity to establish their local mechanisms of dealing with insecurity which this study sought to intervene. The researchers employed two theoretical frameworks that guided the research process, the broken window theory and social capital theory. Descriptive survey research design was employed and purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to draw a representative sample of 3 wards of the 5 wards and 30 CP committee members. The cumulative sample of 30 was achieved after the process of sampling 10 members from each committee’s membership. Further, the researcher identified three key informants from each ward including: the CP committee chairperson, the chief, sub-chief and the ward administrator. Data was collected using questionnaires from CP Committee Members and the key informants. Descriptive statistics namely frequency tables and percentages were used to analyze the data. Qualitative data analysis included the iterative processes of data description. It was found out that CP committees were formed in 2014 in response to high crime rate and least performance by the government to contain the situation under the leadership of the chiefs and sub-chief and stewardship of chairpersons. Further, it was found out that personal characteristics such as gender, income levels, occupation, age, length of stay and marital status influenced participation in CP activities. The community supported their activities and therefore sustainability was guaranteed. As regards performance, the committees were relatively effective despite the key challenge of inadequate resources to run their activities. In addition, the researcher established that the committees mainly relied on contributions from the members of the community to run their operations and that such support was not adequate. We recommend that the CP Committees be empowered by availing adequate resources and other support to enable them undertake their activities optimally in bid to eradicate crime and achieve security in the neighbourhoods