Community Policing and Crime Prevention in Kuching, Sarawak

Lau, Pang Heng (2019) Community Policing and Crime Prevention in Kuching, Sarawak. PhD thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

The study focused on community policing and crime prevention practices in Kuching urban areas under the administration of Kuching police district. The research was based on mixed method – qualitative and quantitative data collection. The objective of the qualitative data was to find out the perception of the respondents on community policing and crime prevention practices through four focus group discussions and 20 in-depth interviews with respondents who were involved in decision making of community policing and crime prevention . The respondents were police, community leaders and crime prevention groups. To gain the public perceptions and attitudes towards community policing activities and its effectiveness, a quantitative survey of 500 respondents from the respective nine police station areas in Kuching were randomly collected. Five hypotheses were tested: (i) Citizen and police community policing collaboration in crime prevention patrol has a strong correlation with the level of crime in the area; (ii.a) there is a strong relationship between police and citizen joint patrol with the level of crime and safety in the neighbourhood; (ii.b) when police and citizen has joint community policing programmes, citizen perception of fear of crime is low; (iii) if police and citizen frequent patrol, the safety status of the neighbourhood will improve; (iv) sharing of crime information by the citizen would have a positive impact in crime reduction. The results showed that community policing and crime has a statistical significance by involving police and members of the community, particularly members from the Sarawak Community Policing Groups. The five hypothesis tested contributed to new knowledge in the community policing and crime prevention practices in Malaysia. This study has found that community policing involving police and members of the public has played an important role in crime reduction in Kuching over the past years. Citizen perception on fear of crime in Kuching is low due to citizen and police collaboration in crime prevention. Policy recommendations were made at the conclusion of this thesis. Keywords: Community policing, crime prevention, broken windows theory, and citizen patrol

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