An Examination of Existing Strategies to Address Street Robberies in the Nairobi Central Business District, Kenya, and their Effectiveness

Abstract

Street robberies are a significant source of fear among the public because victims face an abrupt risk to life, loss of control, and an intrusion of individual space. Street robberies are a particularly dread initiating crime in view of the setting in which it is probably going to happen over the span of somebody's normal life. The 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey demonstrated that street robbers assaulted most victims on their approach to or from work, school, shopping, or running errands. The danger of damage and demise amid an assault further substantiates the open's dread of theft. This study sought to examination of existing strategies to address street robberies in the Nairobi Central Business District, and their Effectiveness. The study was underpinned by the Strain theory by Robert Merton, Social Disorganization and Routine Activity Theory by Cohen & Felson. The study adopted a descriptive research design and targeted persons who had been victims of street robbery within Nairobi CBD in the course of the one year preceding the study. Simple random sampling was used to sample (30%) 107 respondents out of a target population of 356 victims as per the police records within Nairobi CBD. Questionnaires were employed to collect quantitative data from the primary sample while key informant interview guides were employed to collect qualitative data from Key informants. Data collection instruments were piloted before the actual data collection process. Validity and reliability of the study questionnaire were ascertained before commencement of the study. Research findings revealed that majority of the respondents (90.1%) highlighted the national police service as one of the key organizations that deal with the crime of street robbery, 40.2% identified the courts and the rest (19.5%) identified officials from Nairobi city county security department. Majority of respondents (92.6%) indicated that there were street lights while 59.6% agreed that there were CCTV cameras on major streets and terminals, police patrols was confirmed by 54.2% of the respondents, presence of city county askaris (22.3%), and a few ((9.6%) of them pointed that they could see private security guards as strategies for addressing street robberies in Nairobi CBD. When asked on the effectiveness of the existing strategies to address street robberies, most (80.9%) of the respondents asserted that the strategies were not effective. In view of the study findings, the study recommended the development of policies to address street robberies with an insight into the factors encouraging the robberies, the location and crime patterns where the crime happens, and the profiles of both the offenders and victims.

Keywords: Strategies, Street Robberies, Nairobi Central Business District, Effectiveness.

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/81-05

Publication date: November 30^th 2022