Factors influencing adoption of community policing in Kenya: A case of West Pokot County
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors influencing adoption of
community policing in Kenya, a case of West Pokot Sub County.
The objectives of this study are; to find how the culture of the Pokot Community influenced
community policing, to investigate how the level of awareness influenced community
policing, to assess how trust and confidentiality influenced community policing, to establish
how availability of resources and incentives influenced adoption of community policing and
to investigate how economic activities influenced community policing.
A descriptive survey design was used in this study. The target population comprised of the
key informants- community policing members at sub county level, police officers, and
Administrative officers i.e. Deputy County Commissioner, Assistant County Commissioners
and Chiefs and ordinary citizens. The sample size of ordinary citizens was taken through
simple random sampling while community policing members, police officers and
Administrative officers was taken through stratified sampling.
Data was collected using questionnaires, interview schedules and observations. Collected
data was analysed using descriptive statistics where both qualitative and quantitative
approaches were used.
The study selected a sample size of 370 respondents from the targeted population of 10,000
respondents by use of Krejcie and Morgan, 1970 table. The researcher anticipates that all
security stakeholders will use the research to improve their community policing approach,
identify the gaps in the current practice and the environment factors influencing community
policing in order to enhance their adoption and performance thereby improving their ability
to prevent crime more effectively in order to resolve crime and disorder.
This research was based on the assumption that police alone cannot control crime, but require
the active support of the community, to prevent, detect crime, reduce fear and crime and
improve communication between the community and the police.
The study established that Culture of the Community negatively influenced adoption of
community policing as most of the cultural practices was in contradiction to the law, the level
of awareness on community policing was very low and unclear which was also a negative
influence. The study further established that there was mistrust and lack of confidentiality
between the police and citizens hence a setback in community policing adoption. The lack of
resources and incentives was a negative influence while socio-economic activities especially
cattle rearing and sale involved negative habits such as cattle rustling that were a negative
influence to Community policing adoption. 60% of the respondents practice culture that’s
considered in conflict with community policing, 74.3% of the respondents carry out
businesses unlawfully and illegal, 35.9 % of the respondents were fairly informed on CP
while 38.2% were totally uninformed on the Community policing concept.Further,11.5% of
the respondents fairly had trust in the police ,80.8 % had no trust in the police while 7.7%
totally mistrusted the police. The study also established that 100% of the CPC members had
no facilitation, incentives or resources allocated to them. Administrative officers and the
police on the other had only received 9% of the resources they needed to fully implement
Community policing.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Collections
- Faculty of Education (FEd) [5979]