Digital Defiance’s Affecting Use of Information Communication Technology Deployed for Prevention and Detection of Crime in Community Policing in Malawi

Abstract

ICTs digital space has modernized citizen socialization amongst citizens to enhance security and is augmenting for lack of resource constraints as well as promoting less agents on ground thereby strengthening internal security through community policing. Availability of ICT gadgets, applications, and initiatives make simple and influential crime reporting and crime control. This study examines factors that affect the use of information communication technology deployed for crime prevention and detection in community policing. Mixed methods exploratory sequential design was used to collect data. Qualitative purposive sampling targeted four focus group discussions of 10 participants each and one key informant interview of 10 participants, interview guide instrument was utilized. Quantitative household survey used Yamene (1969) formular to identify 432 respondents who were randomly distributed into 10 locations of Muloza and used structured questionnaire. Qualitative data analysis follows transcribing, coding, and grouping into sub-themes, themes that answer research objectives aided by NVivo application. Quantitative analysis used descriptive statistics in SPSS version 20. Under pragmatics paradigm guided by democratic participation, social-disorganization and broken window theories, results show that the majority of ICTs are mobile telephones, which play an important role in the storage, dissemination, and replication of security information in community policing. Dominated by married persons at 56.5% in the youth category of 57.2% respondents. The police are faced with the technical challenge of installing and maintaining ICTs. The police have no ICT resources deployed for the prevention, detection, and investigation of crime in Muloza. Hence, the police rely on personal mobile phones, which are operated on do it yourself as convenience by victim or law enforcement agent to follow an issue. Regression when tested at confidence interval 95.0% showed that some factors have significance value on use of ICTs deployed for prevention and detection of crime in community policing (i) Age at p=.001 (ii) Education at p=.000 (iii) Income at p=.000 (iv) Knowledge expertise at p=.000 (v) Cost of accessing technologies at p=.009 and (vi) Trust issues between police and people at p=.009. The importance of ICTs is that they have revolutionized monitoring and surveillance that may improve prevention, detection, and investigation of crime in community policing, and allow for storage, dissemination, and replication of security information. Proper use of ICTs for prevention and detection of crime may improve police investigations. Citizens’ wide use of ICTs in formal and non-formal ways may help reduce corruption through wide information storage replication and dissemination.