South Africa’s multi-faceted safety and security

needs; how can research and data contribute to

policing across our deep socio-political, economic

and spatial divides?

Dr Barbara Holtmann

Social Transformation Systems

• Why the police conduct research

• Context: community safety across widely diverse socio-political, economic and spatial settings

• The cycle of inequality and poverty; crime and vulnerability in South Africa

• ”What it looks like when it’s fixed”; what is a safe South Africa?

• Rules of engagement – fractured relationships in South Africa, the impact on policing and safety

• Expectations of the police; do communities trust what the police tell them?

• Can research help the police meet community expectations and improve policing and safety?

• Recommendations

Why do police conduct research?

Police conduct research to improve the science of policing, their performance and ultimately to make communities and our society safer.

Research is a universally used tool to provide evidence of what works and what doesn’t and to underpin policy.

To respond appropriately, the police need to know:

What are the crime trends in a particular setting, as well as more broadly?

How has the amount of crime changed over time?

Who is committing these crime, what do we know about them?

Where are the crimes being committed?

How is crime impacting the community?

What is the best strategy for preventing and/or responding to these crimes in these settings?

What worries local people most about these crimes?

What do local people know about these crimes?

What are they doing to avoid victimization?

What do they know about what the police are doing?

What are their expectations of the police?

Context: community safety across widely

diverse socio-political, economic and spatial

settings

Unlike others in the crime prevention/safety and/or security sector, the police must deliver service sand respond to all communities across the spectrum.

Extremes include:

Very poor, rural communities, where most people are know to each other, where resources are low, and reported crime rates don’t necessarily support increased resourcing or more sophisticated policing; here our experience tells us that people know little about the law and their rights to recourse – in some settings local traditional leaders deal with crime, often with restorative rather than punitive intentions.

Poor, densely populated urban communities; here we find that people expect little of the police and rely on local knowledge and “mob justice” as both deterrent and response to crime

Poor, densely populated, highly politicized urban communities where NGOs and CBOs mobilize to demand more effective policing and policy implementation

Middle class and well resourced communities who rely on private security both for strategic inputs into their community safety plans and also for response to incidents of crime.

Expectations of the police; are communities

interested in/do they trust what the police tell

them?

Bearing in mind that consultations never involve more than a very small group of community members, however hard we try, what the STS does is NOT research but it does teach us things about expectations.

Across the spectrum, these responses are common:

Safety is always a key concern, even where the focus of the work is on community development, breaking the cycle of failing education, community transformation, etc.

Participants have little or no idea what the police strategy is, either locally or nationally.

People are dismissive of the role of the police in improving local safety. They often do not even mention them in the ”what it looks like when it’s fixed” picture.

When police participate, they do not offer strategic advice or provide policy information.

People blame the police for high crime rates and vulnerability. This even where there is significant spend on private security.

If crime continues or increases in a community where there is private security, people will spend more to increase that security.

In poor communities, people would like to have private security, for instance at schools.

Can research help meet community expectations

and improve policing and safety?

We often quote research in our workshops – on everything from the benefits of early childhood development to the impact of corporal punishment to the costs of prisons to crime trends and budget analysis.

We quote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, policy on crime prevention, child justice, restorative justice, child care, school safety, crime combating, equality and local government.

We refer participants to readings and websites.

It is the exception, even amongst government participants including police members, to find anyone who has read any of these.

NGOs and CBOs are the most informed, but even amongst these groups, service providers are unlikely to be familiar with the policies that underpin their services. CPF members rarely make any contribution in this regard.

Similarly, when participants have experienced bad service delivery for instance from the police, they are unlikely to have taken it further; approaching a station commander for help is almost unheard of. Whereas police are often required to quell service delivery protests and this negatively influences police community relations, the hierarchical nature of the police structure is seen as a barrier to individual complaints.

Rules of Engagement; fractured relationships

and the impact on policing and safety

Police conduct research to improve the “science of policing”

and to improve

Recommendations

1. Police may have come to understand the value of research, but most communities have not. This is experienced across the board. If police research is to underpin and build confidence in policing models, communities need to view research differently.

2. The deficit of trust and expectations between communities and police is a significant hurdle – and there is no quick fix. Transparency, humility, patience, sensitivity and painstaking relationship building are required.

3. We start all our work from a perspective of deep empathy and compassion. Communities have experienced crime in a way that should never be tolerated. Too many people have been raped, robbed, murdered, incapacitated, bereaved, frightened, intimidated, bullied and traumatized. This is equally true of the police, perhaps even more so. Whatever the policing model, if the police are not healthy, equipped and supported to go out every day in their uniforms, no research will fix what is broken.