Community policing as a strategy to prevent crime

Abstract

The aim of the research was to understand the kind of relationship that exists among officers and other stakeholders in prevention of crime, regarding the purposes of fighting crime in the Zambezi region. This research would want to determine the strength of the relationships and the roles of trust between the police and society to address the research question which exactly refers to what is to be investigated. A qualitative design was used, an approach that involved the analysing and interpreting texts as well as interviews. The study established that there is a poor relationship among stakeholders who actually maintain law and order and that the majority of them were the main contributing factors for the poor implementation of community policing which resulted in poor crime prevention as well. Community policing can only be effectively implemented under the mandate and function of community policing forums as stipulated in the Namibian Police Act 19 of 1990.