Policing strategies and their effectiveness in combating organized crimes in Murang’a County, Kenya

Abstract

Crime is a fluid and influential factor that affects all sphere of development in human society. Modern technological advancement and progress in communication have led to sophistication of criminal activities around the globe. Today, the world faces the intractable problem of illicit drug trafficking, smuggling, organized gangs, hijacking, kidnapping, and terrorism. These crimes are highly dynamic and have adversely affected our societies by disabling the quality of life, threatening human rights and fundamental freedom. Dealing with organized crimes in legal terms has proved to be a delicate task and no community has remained unaffected, although the level and intensity of the problem might vary from one community to another. In Kenya gangs and organized crimes are rapidly taking shape despite the vigorous and vehement national and international efforts towards combating such crimes. The main objective of the study was to investigate the policing strategies used in Murang’a County-Kenya and their effectiveness in combating organized crimes, while the specific objectives were to examine the causes of organized crimes, assess the effect of the standard policing strategies on organized crimes and to analyze the impact of proactive policing innovations and alternative strategies on organized crimes. The study was conducted in Murang’a County and adopted a descriptive cross-sectional design. The target population were members of community policing committee and security agencies with a sample of two hundred and thirty (230) respondents. Cluster sampling was used to distinguish the police from the public while proportional stratified sampling allowed drawing of representative sample from the clusters and purposive sampling enabled selection of key informants. The instruments were pilot tested and analyzed for reliability and validity using Cronbach’s Alpha formula. SPSS version 21 was used as the statistical tool for analysis all through the study. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics: correlation and regression models. The findings in the study shows that organized crimes were prevalent in Murang’a County in the forms of burglaries, robberies, extortion, homicide, gang and violence and pockets of kidnapping. The outcome of the study indicates that the independent variables: policing strategies (standard and proactive), and causes (biological, economical and sociological factors) have an effect on organized crime. The study underscores the importance of addressing the socio-economic and political factors that aggravate crimes, suggesting that, proactive policing strategies are more effective in addressing organized crimes. Similarly, the study also identifies the social crime prevention approaches as well as developmental crime prevention strategies as key tools of managing organized crimes. This notwithstanding, it intimates that, standard policing strategies forms the basis of policing and are the basic models that inform development in policing strategies. Since crime is not the result of any solitary factor but an amalgamation of factors, crime control should not be addressed by single strategy or set of strategies but by mixing of tactics as appropriate with a focus on the specific threat. Therefore, to effectively control organized crimes, policing strategies should be dynamic, tailored to address the nature and changing trends of organized crimes, adopt a multi-sector and strategy approach that are more proactive than reactive.