Examining Community Participation in Crime Prevention in Rural Peshawar, Pakistan

Abstract

Crime is a common phenomenon in rural and urban sectors, yet both the settings are not uniformly exposed to it. Indigenous communities’ engagement in crime deterrence activities has now appeared as an alternative and effective approach towards crime prevention and security maintenance around the globe. Like urban areas, the rural areas in Pakistan are also notorious with all kinds of criminal acts. Scarcity of required updated equipment, resources and poor infrastructure is the main bottleneck that has circumscribed the police capacity to detect and prevent criminal acts in rural societies. Subsequently, alarming crime rate and ineffective functioning of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) has led rural sectors to adopt community policing strategy to protect the society from potential criminal threats. Considering the aforementioned debate, this study was designed to examine community participation in crime prevention in rural areas of Peshawar district of Pakistan. This study has incorporated social capital theory to analyze the prospects of community policing in crime control. Mixed data collection method was used to find out innate capacity of crime prevention of local rural communities of Peshawar. The researcher adopted simple random sampling technique where 370 respondents were selected for information collection. In-depth interviews were also conducted with Station House Officers (SHOs), to find out more about the situation of the criminal activities in the area. Comprehensive survey was conducted, and the collected data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics and Markov chain analysis. It was found that the study area was vulnerable to multifarious criminal acts. Ranging from drug trafficking, violent conflicts, and aggravated assault to the theft being conspicuously prevalent in the rural sector and agricultural commodities were mostly stolen during harvest period. The results validate that dearth of developed infrastructure, inadequate police presence, and government reluctance in providing job opportunities to the emerging youth bulge has unpleasant the crime situation in the research area. Although local community policing was found as an effective strategy to deter crime from the past five years, unfortunately it lacks the institutional capacity to deter crime at broader level. Poor allocation of funds by the government and no surveillance of higher officials were creating hindrance in effective implementation of community policing. This study also found a communication gap between LAEs and local community because of police infectiveness and departmental trust deficit. It was concluded that despite countrywide adoption of community policing strategy in Pakistan, its rural sector is drastically lagging behind in implementation. Hence, the study suggests skill development and training programs that will not only absorb unemployed youth but will also help to reduce crime rate. Moreover, inclusive public-police partnership is mandatory to bridge the trust gap and to secure peace and security. Similarly, through effective socialization regarding crime awareness by all social agents such as family, schools, neighborhood and religious institutions, community can reduce deviant acts can promote compliance behaviors of its members. Infrastructure such as good roads, electricity, CCTV and communication facilities should be developed by the government and private organizations without excluding community members who constitute the social capital. As, developed infrastructure not only act as a buttress to socio-economic development of any society but also help in crime prevention and deterrence.