Analysis of Informal Crime Prevention Strategies in Urban Ghana: The Case of Kumasi and Tamale

Abstract

Globally, the twenty-first century has been considered as an age of urbanization and globalization. These contribute to cities as key nodes, with potential to lead in socio-economic development: increasing connectivity in goods, information, people and, consequently, creating jobs within economies of scale and of scope. Most city managers have often assumed that development is synonymous with economic growth, ease of access to social services, and a foregone conclusion that with prosperity follows enhance safety of life and property. Nonetheless, recent studies have increasingly revealed that cities can also become active hubs of social exclusion characterised with increasing inequality in the access to social services including policing. Recognising the criminogenic tendencies and insecurity associated with cities life, this study interrogates how the marginalized, in the access to state policing services, respond to their security needs in the cityscape. Using a mixed methods approach, this study interrogates this subject by assessing the role of informal crime preventive strategies in the maintenance of internal security, using the Ghanaian cities of Kumasi and Tamale as a case study. A major finding of the study is that the generally held perception that informal crime prevention strategies are the preserve of the poor, conflicts with the reality as the practice cuts across the entire social structure within the urban space. Thus, the study does not only recommend the recognition of some of these informal strategies but also calls for their integration into the existing formal systems. In the long run, the study recommends that local authorities be encouraged to recruit and train their own police forces to benefit from the rich local knowledge and also to meet the context specific nature in crime prevention situations.