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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:46 am
Time: 3:46 am
Results for community policing (durban, south africa)
1 results foundAuthor: Munneke, Jop Title: The Eyes and Ears of the Police? Questioning the Role of Community Policing in Durban, South Africa Summary: Today, the number of actors that are involved in policing are increasing, and its field is not limited to the state police anymore. In this wider field of policing, the role of the community is increasingly recognised as important. The idea that the community should be more actively involved in policing has led to the concept of Community Policing, where the community as an actor in the security spectrum is officially recognised. Community Policing is surfacing and gaining in importance all over the world. But what is Community Policing? What is the ideal behind it, and how is it implemented in actual settings? Community Policing is both initiated by the police as a formal strategy to policing, as well as by the community as an informal strategy, which is often a response caused by discontent about the state-police’s performance in ensuring citizens’ personal security. In South Africa, both forms are seen. Formal Community Policing initiatives were initially introduced during South Africa’s transition to democracy in the early 1990s, when it was used as the police’s main strategy to ensure a smooth transition into a new political system, and to increase the legitimacy of the police among the public. Community Policing Fora (CPF) were the structures that were to ensure Community Policing’s proper implementation. Today, several years after the country’s transition, CPF lost their necessity in ensuring a proper transfer to democracy. Thus, their focus has changed towards crime-prevention, and the community, the police, and local governments are to establish a partnership and devise strategies together to ensure a reduction in crime and safer neighbourhoods. This thesis is based on an ethnographic study that I undertook within neighbourhoods of Durban and their CPF in early 2011. I undertook this research with the purpose of understanding how the CPF work and what their relationship is to the community’s perceptions of security. My findings show that different CPF face different successes and challenges, and that no general conclusion can be made as to how they work. However, factors that may be distinguished as potential challenges to the proper functioning of the fora include resource problems among the South African Police Service (SAPS), the deeply divided society of post-Apartheid South Africa, a lack of trust that the community has in the police and wrong interpretations about how a CPF should function. The effects of a poor relationship between the CPF and the community that is caused by these factors, show themselves in the CPF turning into a complaints forum, poor attendance from the community, increasingly negative perceptions of the SAPS and the surfacing of informal Community Policing initiatives in both the formal and informal settlements of Durban. However, positive results are also seen, and especially through an educational role where the CPF educate the public about actual crime rates and necessary precautions to take in order to decrease an individual’s chances of being a victim of crime, the CPF can and do contribute to higher perceptions of security among the community. Finally, I conclude that when determining the successes of CPF, they should be viewed in a broader perspective than the current one which only looks at their influence on crime-rates. CPF may fail to cause a substantial decrease in numbers, but they may have an effect on longer-term issues that South African society faces, like socio-economic inequality and a deeply divided society. Details: International Police Executive Symposium, 2013. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 43: Accessed August 7, 2013 at: http://www.ipes.info/WPS/WPS_No_43.pdf Year: 2013 Country: South Africa URL: http://www.ipes.info/WPS/WPS_No_43.pdf Shelf Number: 129567 Keywords: Community Policing (Durban, South Africa)Police EffectivenessPolice LegitimacyPolice-Community Relations |