Communities as Neighborhood Guardians: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Community Policing in Nairobi's Suburbs

Abstract

The efficacy of citizens to participate in neighborhood-watch activities and report signs of trouble is important for safeguarding communities against crime. Community policing is a key policing strategy for utilizing the capability of residents to solve local crime-related problems. However, variability in social cohesion among communities profoundly affects the contribution of individuals towards policing. After 7 years of a community policing intervention in suburban Nairobi, Kenya, this study assesses the program as a state-initiated and community-sustained security venture. We compare micro-scaled concentrations of different property and violent crimes to identify geographic variations over time using kernel density estimates and spatio-temporal scan statistics. Multi-level regression models assess the direct and conditioned perceptions of individuals and their neighbors, and how these perceptions influenced crime variation during the pre-and post-intervention periods of community policing. Both the density estimates and the scan statistics pinpoint a disproportionate crime reduction across neighborhoods. The research findings also depict an interaction between the communal willingness to participate in neighborhood-watch activities and the relative crime decline. In particular, those communities that have good relations with the police are more inclined to involve themselves in community policing. The findings of this study are discussed in terms of their implications for policy.

Crime Risk Estimation with a Commuter-Harmonized Ambient Population

“…Analytical models can incorporate information about mobility, interaction, and contextual aspects that characterize the daily activity of individuals (Kwan 2012). Another promising direction that has been advanced in the literature (e.g., Schubert 2009;Lemieux and Felson 2012;Mburu and Helbich 2016) is to link crime with contextual spatiotemporal influences.…”

“…Employees in urban areas often live remotely from their places of work, such as in the immediate city suburbs, to manage housing expenses (Helbich and Leitner 2009). Similarly, the pursuit of cover and greater opportunities leads criminals to offend at a distance from their homes (Mburu and Helbich 2015). Thus, the costavoidance propensity and the interaction of offenders and commuting workers culminate in increased crime incidence, particularly in small areas (Farley and Hansel 1981;Stults and Hasbrouck 2015).…”

Eyes on the Screen: Digital Interclass Coalitions against Crime in a Gentrifying Rural Town

“…But residents can also organize collectively to combat crime. Around the world, community involvement in stopping and preventing crimes take the form of neighborhood watches (Bennett, Holloway, and Farrington 2006;Davis 1990;Portney and Berry 1997;Rosenbaum 1987) or community policing (Hernández Navarro 2014;Mburu and Helbich 2017). In Latin America, most of the research on these communal responses to crime analyzes how violence is lived at the urban margins (Auyero and Bertí 2015;Auyero, Bourgois, and Scheper-Hughes 2015;Kruijt and Koonings 2007), which are contested spaces between the state, para-legal and illegal forces.…”