Effect of Remuneration in Private Security Companies on the Control of Property Crimes in Urban Areas in Kenya: a Case of Nairobi Central Business District
Abstract
The numbers and revenue from PSCs has continued to grow but the remuneration of
personnel has not improved therefore contributing to increased crime and insecurity. This
study sought to assess the effect of remuneration in PSCs on the control of property
crimes in urban areas in Kenya. The site of the study was Nairobi CBD which is within
Starehe District in Nairobi County. Business premises were selected by systematic
random sampling while guards were chosen by purposive sampling to make a total
sample size of 40 persons to which questionnaires were administered. Seven key
informants were selected purposively while additional information was sought from
owners of the business premises.
The study revealed that stealing was the type of property crime known by a number of the
respondents (65 percent) followed by smuggling (27.5 percent). Some respondents (42.5
percent) indicated that the role played by private security during incidents of crime is
omission while a similar number indicated that the reason why guards omitted to perform
their duty or chose to participate in crime was because of low salaries and delays in
payment of salaries. A number of the respondents (37.5 percent) encountered property
crimes very often followed by those who encountered property crimes often (32.5
percent).
The familiar measures to control or prevent crime were access control and patrol (45
percent) followed by increasing risk of arrest and punishment (42.5 percent). Majority of
the respondents (57.5 percent) indicated that the strongest challenge that they faced was
collusion by employees while the best strategy to improve the measures to control or
prevent property crimes was to enhance levels of supervision for key controllers as
chosen by 25 percent of the respondents. Majority of the respondents placed the
importance of remuneration in controlling property crimes to be very high (62.5 percent).
Important recommendations include government to play a leading role in ensuring that
adequate crime research is conducted, stem the tide of proliferation of sophisticated arms
and fast track the pending Private Security Regulations Bill of 2010