Abstract:
Hardly a day passes without cases of robbery being reported in both the print
and the electronic media. It is against this backdrop that the study: Fighting
Robbery in Ghana: Rethinking the Policies and the Strategies was conducted
to analyse the kind of policies and strategies that have informed robbery
control in Ghana from 1993 to 2017. The study adopted the mixed method
research design, using content analysis, interviews and survey methods. The
study is predominantly qualitative in that no hard quantitative methods were
applied. Firstly, back editions of newspapers such as Daily Graphic and the
Ghanaian Times were analysed to find out the crime control strategies that
were reported by the print media. The views of a cross-section of
participants/respondents were solicited for the study. In addition, a survey was
conducted among the general public to ascertain some aspects of the study,
especially the general views on the subject. The study found that over period,
the police service has applied a number of strategies including the use of
criminal justice institutions, informants-led policing and the get-tough or zero
tolerance approach and more. However, these strategies have not worked very
well as robbery numbers or rates keep increasing. The study recommends
rethinking of these methods of fighting robbery by introducing more proactive
policing methods such as community policing and intelligence-led policing
strategies. A four-pronged approach to crime control is proposed as a more
viable option than the usual reactive policing strategies.
