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Effect Of Community Policing On Crime Prevention In Nigeria
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Community policing is a paradigm shift that seeks to focus on
constructive engagement with people who are the end users of the police
service and renegotiate the agreement between the people and the police
therefore making the community co-producers of justice and a quality
police force. The most recent attempt made by the Nigeria police force
to improve its performance was the introduction of community policing
programme in 2004. This was part of the Nigerian Police force’s effort
to change policing to a new and professional policing capable of
ensuring and maintaining proper security of lives and property in
Nigeria. Community oriented policing is a proactive measure that
promotes curbing criminal act.
Conclusively, the police involvement
in community affairs is another strong strategy that allows the police
to display themselves as both private citizens and State agents of
social control. Community policing under this programme or strategy
presents the police as servants of the society who, should in a
reasonable manner, enforce law and order and ensure public compliance
with policies. Extant studies also attest that the involvement of police
in community affairs has actually yielded fruitful results. For
instance, Quinney (1974) affirmed that when the community collaborates
with police personnel in maintaining social order, it helps the legal
system also to be increasingly used in criminal justice administration.
The police are viable instrument for building an inclusive and organised
community policing in Nigeria. Police involvement in community affairs
facilitates rapid and timely control of persistence rebellion, whether
in outright political processes or behaviour that otherwise, violates
the rules of the society. Community policing also helps the State
policing actors to exercise its repressive force on the people in order
to achieve compliance with the law (see also Kelly & Clark, 2003).
This technique can be employed only in a physically and socially
disorganised community. In more disorganised areas, some experts pointed
out, police use aggressive tactics to reduce crime and ‘take back the
streets’ before building relations with community leaders (Siegel, 2008
citing Nolan, Conti & McDevitt, 2004).
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
In
spite the efforts of various police administrations to curb crime in
Nigeria, crime and social disorder in Nigeria, it is obvious that there
is still persistence of crime in the country. Thousands of lives and
millions of naira worth of property are being lost as a result of one
crime or the other. Some believed that the inability of the Nigeria
police to ensure maximum security in the country is as a result of so
many social and technical challenges ranging from lack of necessary
tools to curb crime in the community and lack of maximum cooperation by
the people in the communities ( Dawn Newspaper, 2011).
Corruption in
the Nigeria police force is fuelling abuses against ordinary citizens
and severely undermining the rule of law in Nigeria on a daily basis.
Numerous ordinary Nigerians have been accosted by countless armed police
officers who specialized at demanding bribes and committing human
rights abuses against by extorting money from them. These abuses range
from ordinary arrest and unlawful detention to threats and acts of
violence, including sexual assault, torture, and even extrajudicial
killings (Human Rights Watch, 2010).
Police is not unique. Corruption
is now rampant in the Nigeria police force. Various issues of
corruption concerning the commission have been seen and reported.
However, the issue of corruption in the Nigeria police as noted above
cannot be treated in isolation of the larger society. Corruption in the
police is so prevalent that it has destroyed people’s trust and
confidence they have in the police. Because of this prevalence of
corruption in Nigeria and in the force, this study then aimed at
investigating the effect of community policing on crime in Nigeria.
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
These are some of the questions the study is designed to answer:
i) what is the prevalence of community policing on crime reduction in Nigeria?
ii) what are the factors that affect community policing in Nigeria?
iii) what are the efforts taken by the government to ensure better community policing in Nigeria?
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