Situational Crime Prevention at Ngleshie Amanfro The Role of the Community

Abstract

The study explored the effectiveness or otherwise of the situational measures implemented by the community members of Ngleshie Amanfro to bring under control the sudden upsurge in the incidents of armed robbery in the community. The concurrent triangulation model of the mixed method approach was adopted for the study, using a sample of 415 respondents. The Situational Crime Prevention theory espoused by R. V. Clarke (1997) was used as the main perspective for the study. A survey and in-depth interviews were conducted to obtain field data over a period of 6 weeks. The quantitative data was pre-coded and analyzed using the SPSS. The qualitative data was manually analyzed, while the integrative discussion formant of the mixed method was used to mix the quantitative and the qualitative findings in the discussion of the results. The study found that although other crimes were committed in the community the locals were more concerned about the armed robberies because of the fear and insecurity it created in the community. Among the factor which contributed to the robberies in the community were the absence of law enforcement personnel, inaccessible road networks and unemployment. Situational target hardening measures were the common crime prevention strategies the individuals in the community adopted against the armed robbery attacks. On the communal level police and neighborhood watch scheme personnel were deployed as the crime control measures to check the robberies in the community. These measures were found to be effective in bringing the armed robbery attacks under control in the Ngleshie Amanfro community. Based on these findings the study recommends that stakeholders should be mindful of the effects of community layouts on crime rates and crime control, and the inevitable role of capable guardians against crime in crime control in communities.