Why geographic information systems in spatiotemporal crime analysis? Attitude of Kenyan police officers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Security management is becoming complex in today’s society due to increased transnational crimes, which are enhanced by technological advancements. To address this challenge, police agencies need to continuously adopt and effectively apply more innovative decision-support tools in policing. Kenyan police officers are however still using push-pins on paper-maps to analyze crime. The goal of this study was therefore to determine how crime is documented, mapped and analyzed in Kenya, and to assess Kenyan police officers’ attitudes toward adoption of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in spatiotemporal crime analysis. A descriptive survey targeting 120 police officers was carried out at the Kenya National Police Service (NPS) headquarters in Nairobi. Only 94 subjects (78%) of the targeted sample responded to the study. The study reveals that crime recording by NPS is done on paper-based occurrence books (OBs), statistical analysis is executed on Ms Excel and spatial analysis is performed using paper-maps. Among the respondents, 70% believed GIS technology would be useful in spatiotemporal crime analysis while 57% were uncertain the technology would be easy to use. As such, 64% of the respondents were optimistic that they would be satisfied with GIS technology in spatiotemporal crime analysis. The study therefore concludes that although crime recording and spatial analysis were done manually, Kenyan police officers had an open mind towards adoption of GIS tools in spatiotemporal crime analysis. The study recommends sensitization about and training on GIS applications to Kenyan police officers as well as an evaluation of manual versus computer-based crime analysis tools to assess user-preferences.