RICHARD MUSAAZI: Policing in Uganda: Is There a Better Approach?

Just how effective is Uganda’s crime prevention? Do we have enough police officers? Is there another way to tackle the problem?

The objectives and principles of policing

Two key objectives form the bedrock of policing. The first is the need for police to prevent crime and keep citizens safe. The second, equally important, is the need to maintain community trust and confidence.
Both objectives should have equal standing. However, in difficult times, our national discourse often focuses on one objective at the expense of the other. Today, the focus is on building citizens’ confidence and trust in the police. At other times, especially when crime is on the rise or the threat of terrorism looms, the emphasis is on public safety.
Two objectives: public safety and public confidence
To achieve both these objectives, two principles must be followed. The first is that the key metric in judging policing success should be crimes prevented, not arrests made. Decades of research leads to a definite conclusion: we can’t arrest our way out of crime. Neither “broken windows” nor “zero tolerance” policing tactics that make many arrests for minor offences effectively prevent crime. However, there is much evidence that other proactive and problem-solving alternatives that do not emphasize arrest are effective.
Two principles: crime prevention and citizen reaction
The second principle is that citizen reactions to the police and their tactics are of paramount importance. This reaction should be considered independently of how successful policing methods are in preventing crime. Citizen reactions matter, regardless of crime control effectiveness. It’s important to recognize that there are many evidence-based alternatives to “Stop, Question and Frisk” (SQF) with far less harmful impacts on community relations.

Seven adjustments to improve policing

Creating a balance between these two principles requires fundamental adjustments to the practice and expectations of Ugandan policing. Such reinvention starts with seven important changes:

Prioritize crime prevention over arrests
The priority must be crime prevention, not arrests. This does not mean that police should stop making arrests. Arrests for serious crimes are a necessity, but more than 80% of arrests are for minor offences. My research shows would-be offenders are not deterred by harsh punishment or by rapid response and clearing cases. Preventative alternatives work better. These include proactively targeting problem places, people, and situations with problem-solving and deterrence measures that may include non-police partners.

Implement systems to monitor citizen reaction
In order to keep track of public opinion, it is vital to create and install systems that monitor citizen reactions to the police and report results back to the public. Police should routinely survey citizens on their reactions to the police and specific tactics. Results of these surveys should be regularly reported back to both citizens and officers. The purpose of feedback should not just be informational. It should also include the changes in police strategies and tactics made in response to the polling information.

Reform police training
The content of police training depends on what agencies, trainers, supervisors, and fellow officers define as the “craft” of policing – the functions, purposes, and methods of good policing. We need to redefine this craft. Current training reinforces a traditional, reactive and arrest orientation in policing. If we want officers instead to see their craft in terms of prevention and citizen reaction, they need to be trained in the tools and perspectives necessary for achieving these two objectives.

Recalibrate organizational incentives
What’s driving officers to achieve excellent policing? The metrics used to judge performance and suitability for promotion should measure the officer’s knowledge of evidence-based strategies known to reduce crime and improve community trust and confidence. Candidates for promotion should be evaluated on how well they translate this knowledge into practice. The basis for awarding medals, citations, and commendations should be given for preventing crime or improving citizen-officer interactions, as well as success and bravery in apprehensions.

Strengthen accountability with more transparency
Citizen confidence relies on openness and honesty. Police accountability encompasses a complex array of legal, procedural, and organizational issues and transparency is a vital part of this. Large gaps in the availability of data and policies related to police-citizen interactions should be closed, particularly those involving the use of force. The public should be regularly informed of the outcomes of investigations into allegations of police misconduct.

Incorporate analysis into managerial practice
The analysis of crime and citizen reaction needs to be made a priority of managerial practice.
Officers, supervisors and leaders should shift from reactive and procedures-based decision making to more critical thinking and analytic problem-solving. This requires that personnel at all levels have access to high-quality analysis of crime and citizen reactions and are adequately trained to manage that information to obtain specific outcomes.

Strengthen national-level research and evaluation
At present, Government funding on policing and crime prevention more generally is minuscule compared, for example, to money spent on MP’s vehicles. More research is needed if we are to find the cure for some of the most challenging problems we face in policing, crime prevention, and police-citizen relations.

Re-evaluating what policing is really about

Ugandan policing in the 21st century should be the era when both crime prevention and citizen reaction are recognized as independent values that not only support one another but also require sophisticated integration into policing organizations.

This is an opportune moment in the history of policing to highlight the fundamentals of policing and what it takes to get us there. The reality is it’s not ingrained into the habits of everyday policing… This is the perfect time to remind all of us, not just the police but the citizens and the media, what policing is about. We can’t fix community relations with the police simply by having a community meeting or some superficial thing. You have to reimagine the performance metrics of the police.
I want to offer the police realistic ways to change the way they work on the streets
The evidence-based playbook offers officers concrete ideas for improving and measuring how patrol officers do their job. It shows what officers on the street can do to be proactive, such as identifying local crime hot spots, directed patrols and preventing repeat burglaries in a neighbourhood after one has occurred.

Leadership is also a crucial element. This requires a different type of police leader, critical, highly educated, and open to change in a dynamic learning environment. You need someone open to the community’s input, taking into account not only citizens but the media as well.

In my view, there are ways in which you can measure the success of crime prevention. For example, if a crime hot spot shows a decline in crime figures following an intervention, this is a reliable indicator of success. Beyond that, there are factors that we know are effective in preventing crime. In medicine, we rely on therapies that prevent conditions from occurring. This same principle should be employed in our policing strategies. Prevention is always better than cure.

Richard Musaazi
Digital Forensic Investigator
www.richardspi.com