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.