Background

This study is intended to describe and assess the implementation of South Africa's community policing policy. It is based on research, conducted between 22 August and 15 October 2000, commissioned by the British Department for International Development for the South African Police Service (SAPS), and is published with the kind permission of the SAPS. The research started with a detailed scan of the legislation, policy and other documents relevant to the development and implementation of community policing in South Africa. Next followed a series of interviews with senior police management and community policing practitioners in all the nine provinces, 32 SAPS area command structures and with personnel at 45 police stations selected from the 219 SAPS' priority police stations. In addition to the police and practitioner interviews, three public opinion surveys were conducted. These consisted of:

The study provides a representative analysis of the implementation of community policing in the SAPS priority areas. However, the diversity in the range of the areas and police stations accessed in the study (urban and rural, advantaged and disadvantaged) together with the fact that there was significant input from provincial role-players, means that the issues raised in the monograph may well be relevant to the implementation of community policing across the country.

Key findings

The policy guiding the implementation of community policing in South Africa has, while consistently focusing on the functions of the Community Policing Forums (CPFs), substantially shifted in emphasis in the course of the past eight years.

Initially focusing on oversight of the police, the objectives of the policy have moved through a focus on relationship-building and the creation of 'partnerships' to help improve police services towards a much greater concentration on community mobilisation for social crime prevention.

However, the CPFs have a very limited public reach, and cannot be considered representative of the communities in which they function. Further, as CPF practitioners do not appear to engage with their core functions in the manner outlined in the policy and legislation, the CPFs are, in their current form and functioning, poorly placed to engage meaningfully in local safety, security and policing issues.

This is mostly attributable to the continuing lack of practical and systematic support from the state; support that is required by legislation.

Therefore, implementation of the changing policy has not been effective in relation to its common core goals, which are: ensuring wide-ranging input on community needs and priorities, improving police responsiveness to these needs, and developing a common sense of public responsibility towards, and capacity for, addressing crime.

Public safety, security and policing in the SAPS priority areas therefore remain a long way away from being seen as a common responsibility, or everybody's business. They remain, in the perceptions of the general public, still very much 'police business'.

The public in the SAPS priority areas, many of whom have been victims of crime, are generally sceptical of the effectiveness of the police, concerned about police corruption, and not particularly enthusiastic about general interaction with the police. Members of the public either believe that crime in their areas of residence has increased over the past four years, or that the police have made little significant impact on criminal activity. They also believe that the quality of policing in these areas has not changed perceptibly, or that it has become worse over the past four years; therefore they remain ambivalent regarding the police.

Despite these general perceptions, the majority of those members of the public who sought and received police services were satisfied with them. This positive response was attributed to the professional, supportive and prompt service they received from the police.

The difference between the negative general public perceptions and the positive perceptions of people who had direct contact with the police is indicative of the extent to which external factors, about which the police can do little, can influence attitudes. These factors include standards of living, access to other government services, access to information, media reporting, interpersonal communication and general perceptions of governance, and of safety.

Indeed, the research shows that most of the police in the community safety centres (or charge offices) in the priority police station areas are doing well. They are meeting the relatively high expectations of those who need their services and are, therefore, generating high levels of client satisfaction at least in the initial stages of the processing of cases.

More important for this study, it is difficult to attribute the satisfaction of those who received police services to the implementation of the community policing policy. This is because, firstly, implementation of the policy has not been effective in terms of its primary focus, the functions of the CPFs; and, secondly, no data exists by which to compare current police services and public perceptions with those that pertained prior to the implementation of the policy.

What has been established, however, is that together with a range of other measures associated with the country's democratisation, the policy has succeeded in opening a previously closed organisation to greater public scrutiny, study and interaction. It is this, as well as the political emphasis over the past three to four years on improving service delivery in all government departments, to which one may more plausibly attribute improvements to basic police services.