CRIME REPORTING INFORMATION SYSTEM: CASE OF KENYA POLICE

BY

MILLICENT THOMAS

UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITYAFRICA.

FALL 2021
 CRIME REPORTING INFORMATION: CASE OF KENYA POLICE

BY

MILLICENT THOMAS

A Project Report Submitted to the School of Science and Technology in Partial

Fulfillment of the

Requirement for the Degree of Master of Science in

Information Systems and Technology

UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITYAFRICA.

FALL 2021

ii
 STUDENT’S DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this is my original work and has not been submitted to
any other college, institution, or university other than the United States International
University in Nairobi for academic credit.

Signature____________________________
Date_________________________________

Ms Millicent Thomas (ID NO 636074)

This project has been presented for examination with my approval as the appointed
supervisor:

Signature_____________________________Date______________________________
__

Jimmy Macharia, PhD

Signature____________________________Date_______________________________
__ Dean, School of Science and Technology

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 COPYRIGHT

All rights reserved. No part of this dissertation report may be photocopied, recorded, or
otherwise reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any electronic or
mechanical means without prior permission of USIU-A or the author.

Millicent © 2021

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 ABSTRACT

The project seeks to develop a crime reporting information system application that will
help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the police security measures in crime
reporting from the public and alerting the public of crimes in their area. Most Kenyan
citizens are afraid of lodging a complaint at the police station for fear of victimization by
the police or even the criminals themselves.Police brutality is a major issue in Kenya with
security forces often accused of carrying out enforced disappearances, extrajudicial
executions and torture with impunity. With all this in mind, the ordinary citizen when
faced with a crime incident that needs reporting, always sees it very difficult to walk into
a police station and report for fear of victimization.
Cases such as domestic violence where the husband is beaten by the wife or rape cases,
the fear of going to a police station is real and hard to overcome. The victims of such
criminal case which are branded shameful by the communities need a platform that is not
biased at all and that protects their privacy. A crime reporting information system will
ally these fears and facilitate the reporting of crime to the police efficiently. This will also
provide the police with timely and accurate information about a particular crime in a
specified location and enhance professionalism.
The project also once implemented will eliminate the manual paper-based information
system in place and facilitate the electronic provision of online crime reporting system to
crime investigators in the different police stations in Kenya. The project will also seek to
understand the stakeholders who are the people to be affected by the research during and
after it is done. With these in hand the project will be able to arrive at objectives of the
research.
Research will be done at various police post within Nairobi County due to its large
population which will act as guide during data collection.Nairobi county has been
choosen for the research as it has been ranked as the lead county in criminal activities in
all the counties hence a rich ground to execute the project.
The project will review previous works to show the gap that exists between the past
works and the current problem. A conceptual framework will be designed to show how
the proposed system will look like. After all data is collected from the various police
posts, the system will be implemented using programming languages to be selected by the
researcher. Finally testing per module which helps in easy ways of debugging if there are
problems, it involves the end users through user acceptance testing.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I take this opportunity to thank my project supervisor Prof Jimmy Macharia and the USIU
IT support technicians’ team for their valuable guidance and for providing all the
necessary facilities which were indispensable in the completion of this project. I would
like to express my special gratitude towards Prof Macharia for his valuable time, support,
comments, corrections, suggestions, and persuasion.

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 DEDICATION

I dedicate this project to the gallant soldiers and all the disciplined force for their tireless
effort in helping keep every citizen safe from the endless threats that surround us.

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 Table of Contents

STUDENT’S DECLARATION..................................................................................................................III

COPYRIGHT................................................................................................................................................IV

ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................................V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT...........................................................................................................................VI

DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................................VII

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................1

1.1: INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................................1
1.2: BACKGROUND TO THE PROBLEM..........................................................................................................1
1.3: PROBLEM STATEMENT...........................................................................................................................4
1.4: PURPOSE OF THE STUDY.......................................................................................................................5
1.4.1: General Objective.........................................................................................................................5
1.5: SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY.......................................................................................................5
1.6: JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY..............................................................................................................6
1.7: SCOPE OF THE STUDY............................................................................................................................6
1.8: DEFINITIONS..........................................................................................................................................6
1.9: CHAPTER SUMMARY..............................................................................................................................7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................................................................8

2.1: INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................8
2.2: THEORETICAL FOUNDATION..................................................................................................................8
2.2.1: Crime Geographical Profiling.....................................................................................................9
2.2.2: SPACE AND TIME SURVEILLANCE....................................................................................................10
2.2.3: Future Crime Technology...........................................................................................................10
2.3: CASE STUDY OF THE KENYA POLICE SERVICE...................................................................................11
2.3.1: Police Misconduct......................................................................................................................13
2.3.2: Police Leadership and organizational Structure........................................................................13
2.4: CASE STUDY OF STAKEHOLDERS........................................................................................................14
2.5: CASE STUDY OF CRIME REPORTING SYSTEMS....................................................................................14
2.6: GAPS IDENTIFIED IN CRIME REPORTING SYSTEMS.............................................................................15
2.7: CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK.................................................................................................................16
2.8: CHAPTER SUMMARY............................................................................................................................16

REFERENCE................................................................................................................................................18

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ix
 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1: Introduction
Crime against the person or against property affects the person directly and the
community indirectly. The effects are felt in all sectors of the economy, from health and
productivity. Crime against one person is therefore crime against all. It is therefore
prudent that every plays their role in combating all forms of criminality. In Kenya, crime
has been on the rise due to reasons such as terrorism, cattle rustling, competition over
natural resources and territorial control, prolofication of illegal firearms and small
weapons and an influx of illegal aliens and undocumented immigrants. Mombasa and the
Eastleigh in Nairobi have been ranked as East Africa’s hub for the smuggling of
immigrants as well as for the trafficking of women and children for prostitution, the sex
industry, and other forms of forced labor. Therefore, the need to have a safe and private
way to report criminal activities in all the counties is necessary so as to help curb the rise
of crime through easy reporting and case filing.

1.2: Background to the problem

Crime may be a part of outlaw activities in human life and it’s obvious that the speed of
crimes is increasing day by day altogether societies across the globe, however we tend to
believe that there’s loads which may be done the governments to cut back the crime rates
in communities. Crime particularly in Nairobi has been on the rise to the extent of having
terrorist attacks, gang-based crimes, and individual criminal acts. Violent and sometimes
fatal criminal attacks, including home invasions, burglaries, armed carjackings, and
kidnappings can occur at any time and in any location.
Most criminals rob victims of their possessions and release them unharmed, if they are
completely cooperative. However, criminals will not hesitate to shoot a victim who is
uncooperative or who may appear to hesitate before complying with their assailant. One
tactic of carjackers is to tie up victims and put them in the back seat or trunk of their own
car, transporting them to an ATM to withdraw cash. The problem to all this comes on
how such individuals caught up in the various crime can be able to report these crimes
without having to walk into a police station. Our aim is to leverage on technology both
existing and emerging to come up with a system that will assist both the public and the
police on crime reporting.

1
Technology wise, Kenya has been ranked as one of the countries with the highest rate of
internet access among its citizens due to the high number of mobile phone ownership
(Waitara, J. K. (2015). There is no doubt that the wide use of internet here in Kenya has
brought people together and enhanced communication. If well used and implemented, the
police could have a realtime response to crimes reported to them by the public.
Nowadays every Kenyan citizen is in the lookout for alerts on security incidents
surrounding them. This show that security is an important part of our lives as Kenyan
citizens. Its for this purpose that the police become very important. The Kenya police
service is a public institution that is mandated to serve the Kenyan people in matters of
security and maintaining law and order. Every time the police make arrests that means
they have added records to their database only this time they are using handwritten
records. Most of the times when this crimes or arrests are taking place, the public in the
surrounding area is not even aware. If measures are put in place and the general public is
able to receive alerts and report crime on time and they will be able to take actions on the
security of their lives and properties to prevent crime.
This raises a question whether it’s time for our Kenya Police Service to adopt a crime
reporting information system and migrate from the manual system where you must walk
into a police station to report. This kind of reporting system hinders real-time responses to
crime due to the time lost walking or driving to the police station (Prestholdt, J. (2019).
This has consequently led the Kenya Police Service to maintain a large volume of
information which is mainly stored in files and occurrence books. This manual system
which is paper-based, information is passed on hand-to-hand, and information is kept in
hard-copy paper files stored ordinarily in filing cabinets. Despite the relevance of their
information system, it poses several challenges in the management of information that
include an ever-increasing paper-load, difficulty in enforcing file access controls as well
as cases of missing files and information (Kenya: Real-time reporting to lift the lid on
police killings, abductions. (n.d.)
Embracing technology especially in the reporting of crime and access to criminal records
would be very effective and efficient for the police force. In developed countries,
technology such as facial recognition cameras, remote surveilance, automatic surveilance
to dedicated laboratories and evidence analysis tools have been used in crime detection
for decades (Kannan, M., & Singh, M. (2020). Even with this advancements in
technology, we are still having loopholes in security matters and a crime presence both
global and local communities. Milestones have been achieved on internet technology and

2
especially the area of cloud technology has made it possible to have many online platform
and eliminated walk in to offices.
The project seeks to develop an application that will help to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the police security measures in crime reporting from the public and
integration with other stakeholders such the Ethics and anticorruption commission and
Judiciary. This online crime reporting application offers a high level of identity protection
for its users. On this reporting system user identities must be secure from exposure and in
all the cases registered, the users will use their real names. In cases of informers, where
they would want to use pseudonyms that would make its very difficult to contact and
hence will not be accepted as a result. However, two things are a must which is a must for
informers to provide their real names like other citizens and their identities must be well
protected. Anonymity can effectively protect victims and witness and the security
mechanisms must be put in place involved in data transmission and user identification
verification during reporting. For a stable crime reporting information system the
following measures must be met: authentication, integrity, anonymity, and non-
repudiation, avoiding disclosure of informer or victim identity, preventing the reported
information from being intercepted and prevention of cases being erased from the system.
This will provide the police with timely and accurate information about a particular
crime in a specified location.( Kannan, M., & Singh, M. (2020). The project seeks to
develop the application to eliminate paper-based information exchanges and to facilitate
the electronic provision of online crime reporting system to crime investigators. This
current methodology that the Kenya police service are using to receive information has
some weakness. In most cases, the reporting happens when its too late making it hard for
the officers involved gather the right information. Another weakness is that, police
officers are not capable of patrolling the whole region due to the low ratio of police to
citizens.(Vidgen & Wang, 2009). In other cases where victims are able to call the
emergency numbers provided, those on the receiving end are not well trained to handle
callers who are experiencing a fright situation or emergency on the victim end.
The Kenya police service should create awareness through the national government of the
existing emergency numbers and make sure that those handling the call are well trained
officers in handling callers who are in emergency situations or experiencing fright. This
will help the officer to handle any or the strangest type of call they may receive from
victims. The police officers also need to well equipped to reduce reliance on eye witness
that may not be accurate when the are making their investigations. The modern security

3
cameras installed within Nairobi city are very useful in fighting crime and a
comprehensive research has to be done on how they can be integrated with the crime
reporting information system in the quest to fight crime. The number plate recognition
system which is already in place could also be used to solve crime especially cases of
carjacking this is also open to research so that investigators may not misuse it in aiding
crime instead of fighting it.
The project will also seek to understand the stakeholders who are the people to be
affected by the research during and after it is done. With these in hand the project will be
able to arrive at objectives of the research. The objective will be arrived at and there will
be development of strategies which are the specific objectives of research. Research will
be done at various police post within Nairobi County due to its large population which
will act as guide during data collection.
The project will review previous works to show the gap that exists between the past
works and the current problem. A conceptual framework will be designed to show how
the proposed system will look like. After all data is collected from the various police
posts, the system will be implemented using programming languages to be selected by the
researcher. Finally testing per module which helps in easy ways of debugging if there are
problems, it involves the end users through user acceptance testing.

1.3: Problem statement

The Kenya police departments in the country are, today, virtually unconnected islands
which makes response to crime take time resulting to the loss of life and in some cases
damage of properties. Technology advancement has assisted in reducing the response
time due to availability of mobile phone and radio calls. However, many cases go
unreported and unresolved either due to late response or even total lack of reporting due
to fear by the victims from police victimization of the criminals (Roth, M. P. (2011).

Kenya police service has minimal or no records of crime or criminals that can be accessed
electronically except the manual paper records a thing which has to change for prompt
response and crime solving. It for this reason that a crime information system should be
adopted to provide accurate data which can be transmitted instantly to the police station
nearby without having to technically walk in (Macharia, P. (2011). The goal of the system
is to facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analysis transfer and sharing of data and

4
information at the police station departments and between the police station and other
police stations and their respective department headquarters.

To tackle the problems caused by the situation, the development of a crime reporting
information system is proposed. The crime Information System will manage the criminal
records of the police with greater ease and flexibility and case assignment (Alexander, P.
(2016). The adoption of this system would be very valuable to the police service as the
system can help them handle their ever-increasing criminal record information. There
could be more functionality added to the system like staff management modules, wider
information sharing networking as well as greater security controls for the system.

The need for good record-keeping and information-sharing practices has taken on added
significance in today’s global environment (Transnational Crime and Transnational
Policing 1. (2017). Not only do good records provide crucial internal information (i.e.,
business operations and case management support not to mention the official memory of
an agency’s investigations), law enforcement agencies now need to communicate agency-
to-agency and across continents to protect the Kenyans citizens. Nothing is more
important to accomplishing that mission than having accessibility to accurate and timely
records. Calls for service records and investigative, arrest, criminal identification,
detention, and even civil records hold information that by themselves mean little;
however, when pieced together with information from other jurisdictions, the result can
help with all levels of investigations and aid in safeguarding Kenya (Jones, N. (2018).

1.4: Purpose of the study

1.4.1: General Objective

The general objective of this research is to develop a crime reporting system that will
facilitate solving and reporting of crime on time.
1.5: Specific objective of the study

The following specific objectives were used to address the main objective of the study
1. To investigate Kenya Police Service organizational factors, Influence on
implementation of the crime reporting Information system
2. To assess stakeholders’ factors, influence on implementation of the crime
reporting information system

5
 3. To Study system factors, influence on implementation of the crime reporting
information system

1.6: Justification of the study

The study when completed and implemented will increase the general efficiency of the
Kenya Police Service and their measures of keeping criminal records of complainants that
would be easy to retrieve information from, by crime investigator(s) and approved
persons. It will also assist the Kenya Police Service and other securities agencies such as
the National Intelligence Service, Military Intelligence, Recce in their bid to counter
terrorism and solve crimes with timely and useful information about criminals and their
mode of operations to nib in the bud criminal activities in each locality and Kenya due to
the easy in crime reporting.

1.7: Scope of the study

The study will target the police and administrators from the different security organs
within Nairobi due to the high population and the high crime rate compared to other
counties. The sample will be picked randomly and will cover people above 18 years. The
study will also be inclusive of all gender.
There will be the limitation of rigidity where the police finding it difficult to respond to
questions from civilians thereby restricting the information obtained for the development
of the system. The police service may also hinder the implementation of the system due to
their corruption levels since the manual system is an venue for them to siphon money
from civilians since it was easily manipulated, and many are not so computer literate.

1.8: Definitions

Crime: This is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. 

Computer: is a machine that uses electronics to input, process, store, and output data
Server:  a computer or system that provides resources, data, services, or programs to
other computers, known as clients, over a network.
Client: a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available
by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks.
Network: a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes.

6
Computer system: a set of integrated devices that input, output, process, and store data
and information.
System security: the protection of computer systems and information from harm, theft,
and unauthorized use.

1.9: Chapter Summary

This chapter provides some background on issues of crime reporting and intelligence
systems operation. The chapter has background information, problem statement,
objectives, justification, and scope of the study. Several countries across the world are
making efforts towards improving the level of security for their citizens. Technology has
been identified as an avenue through which security can be enhanced because various
security forces can get assistance from the citizens in fighting. Chapter two presents
literature on the role of security agencies tasked with the responsibility of conducting
investigations of criminal activities at a global and the Kenyan context. Moreover, it
provides information regarding gaps in information and needs assessment of the subject
matter will also be documented. The information discussed also include the problems
faced by citizens in the process of reporting crimes and problems of police response.

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 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1: Introduction

This section will analyze on different ways we can adopt Technology to report crime and
avoid victimization when reporting crime to the specific authorities. The literature review
includes technology and crime, training and development of officers, organizational
culture, public perception toward police, reporting and recording of crime and methods of
measuring crime in the society from secondary sources of information. The chapter also
presents the study theoretical and conceptual framework. Looking at a few cases within
Nairobi and other parts of Kenya, we all realize crime has become a very slippery
situation to deal with. It’s the high time we adopt and implement a very effective and
user-friendly way of dealing with crime. This chapter will also analyze the specific
objectives as earlier stated in chapter one as follows:
1. To investigate Kenya Police Service organizational factors, Influence on
implementation of the crime reporting Information system- This will be
conducted and reported in a case study of the Kenyan Police Service
2. To assess stakeholders’ factors, influence on implementation of the crime
reporting information system- We shall analyze all other stakeholders involved
in handling crime cases.
3. To Study system factors, influence on implementation of the crime reporting
information system- We shall analyze the current systems available for crime
reporting and ways to improve on them.

2.2: Theoretical Foundation

Technology is transforming police work by introducing new tools to fight crime. Can we
resolve crime issues in our country? A case study of Nairobi, we realize that crime poses
numerous consequences to the economic and social growth, and despite the high rate of
crime reporting we still find that most developing countries we find that use of
computerized methods of crime reporting is still been conserved. (Mburu, 2014)
Crime general has different ways of handling they are as follows: Tactical crime analysis,
Strategic crime analysis and Intelligence analysis which are basically influence security

8
formulation whereas Operational analysis, Criminal investigative analysis and
Administrative crime analysis are practiced as we main the day-to day law enforcement.
(Ferreira, 2012)
With the involving technology, crime reporting has been made easy since the following
questions are easily answered.
a. Where did the crime occur?
b. Which of kind of crime occurred?
c. What time did the crime occur?
d. Who committed the crime?
The theoretical foundation will involve the following:
i. Crime Geographical Profiling
ii. Space and time crime surveillance
iii. Future crime prediction

2.2.1: Crime Geographical Profiling

Geographic profiling is an investigative technique that uses the locations of a connected
series of crime to work out where an offender most likely lives, or bases their activities
from. (Rossmo, 1999)
We can adopt technology to implement this theory by use of hard technology innovation
devices like in the Western Countries. This hard technology innovation devices include
CCTVs and drones. Below is an image demonstration of Crime Geographical profiling.

9
 Figure 1: Crime Geographical profiling

2.2.2: Space and time surveillance.

Involving technology has brought about the installation of public surveillance systems,
despite how effective this will solve the problem of crime it needs a lot of planning,
integration and implementation. (Nancy G. La Vigne, 2011)
Crime events vary from time to time and this kind of technology is very efficient. The
public surveillance systems are able to monitor each and every activity happening with a
specific geographical area. According to a study done by the United Nations in 2018, it
reported that Nairobi shows the number of crimes committed and those reported do not
tally. This makes crime a major challenge and at the rate at which the country is growing
adopting and implementing technology would ease even the work load on the police.
With this kind of technology we will find that the number of crimes reported and easily
solved are much more than before and we shall see the crime rate reducing as a country.
Below is a basic presentation of how crime reporting systems are effective.

10
 Effect of Technology on Crime
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2018 2019 2020

Technology Crime Reported Cases

Figure 1: Effect of Technology on Crime

2.2.3: Future Crime Technology

In this 21st century, Technology is taking over and in this event crime reporting should be
prioritized to ensure safety of citizens. We should be able to create systems that are able
to detect crime and report with immediate effect to the necessary. If we would take a
scenario of fire alarms the technology where the alarm detects the smoke before it blazes
is very effective and helps in solving fire problems before they occur.
By implementing the crime reporting system this will enable us solve crimes in a very
short period of time and at the same time protect innocent people from crimes they have
been accused of. Future crime technology should also be considered as a state of moving
with times and letting go of hat our ancestors practiced and embrace change.

2.3: Case Study of the Kenya Police Service

Security management is becoming complex in today’s society due to increased

transnational crimes, which are enhanced by technological advancements. To address this
challenge the Kenya Police Service need to continuously adopt and effectively apply
more innovative decision-support tools in policing. Kenyan police officers are however
still using push-pins on paper-maps to analyze crime even with the current technology
advancement (Neil, B. 2016)
New technological innovations around the world have been developed to prevent crime
and to improve the performance of the police, but we know remarkably little about how

11
and why certain innovations are adopted, and the consequences both intended and
unintended of technology-driven solutions to the problem of crime (Jones, N. 2018). This
project intends to explore innovations we can adopt in areas of crime control, crime
prevention and police performance.

Technology change from the current system which revolves around the telephone, the
two-way radio, and the automobile to more innovative technology that involves computer
would go a long way in policing (Leventakis, G., & Haberfeld, M. R. (2018). Computers
are created to keep information confidential and with high level of integrity. The crime
information system will have the background users of that data, and if not secured, one
can access every kind of data sensitive information. As the crime information system is
created, a need for measures of proper authentication and validation for the people
accessing the data is paramount. We also need to encrypt systems to make sure data gets
where you want to go, without others being able to understand it. In the developed high-
tech world, information is so crucial that every aspect of our lives is based on it. Almost
all organizations have a computer system due to the high data that is collected daily and
needs processing (Alexander, P. (2016).
According to a report by the National Police Service Commission in 2018, there was a
higher rate of reported cases as compared to 2017 which was an increase. (Service, 2018).
The National Police further stated that the increase was as a result of increases in cases
under the categories of stealing, breakings, theft of stock, theft by servant, economic
crimes, theft of vehicles and other thefts, homicide and robbery with violence. (Service,
2018)
The above analysis shows we need a better Crime Reporting System and in much as we
would think of it, we will reduce the crime rates in our country. It is also recorded that
most of these crimes are not solved due to the high rates of corruption. Our systems are
well known for “who do I know in the big offices”, this has let us down as a country as
we are not able to come clean in fear of been executed. If we only gather the confidence
of exposing our corrupted officers, we shall have an easy time when it comes to reporting
crime (Jones, N. (2018).
The Kenyan police however have been able to analyze various causes of insecurity in
Kenya and the most common ones with the country. They are as follows:
i. Terrorism- The type of crime committed by Al shabbab militants and in most
cases we end up losing our Police men in line of duty and other people too. In

12
 most cases this kinds of crime in Kenya take days to be resolved due to the
systems used to reporting this kinds of incidents. To counter this kind of crime the
government has put in bilateral and multilateral partnerships whereby security
personnel go through the basic training of how to counter terrorism, this also
includes the involvement of crime reporting applications where by they are also
advised to training the public on how to handle such crimes. (Service, 2018)
ii. Cattle Rustling: This is also a big challenge and mostly in the North Eastern parts
of Kenya where communities kill each other in search of pasture and other land
disputes. If only the crime detectors were in such areas our law enforcers would
be able to deal with this kind of crime. Our government should not only focused in
implementing technology in the developed counties but should consider every part
of the country. To deal with such cases the Kenyan police service has come up
with a mission of setting up National Police Reserves (NRs) which enables to
confiscate illegal weapons and light weapons used by the cattle rustlers.
iii. Drugs and Substance Abuse- This has become a major challenge in the country
and does not only cause crime but also causes loss of very many opportunities in
terms of health, social and economic wellbeing of the users who are mainly the
users.
iv. Domestic Violence- currently as a country domestic violence has become the new
way of victimization. The Police are not able to capture this kinds of crimes in
time and also give offenders of such crimes room to either commit suicide or free
from the crime scene. If we train our system on how to handle such cases then we
will not be victims of a domestic violence. We also find that the rate of corruption
in our country violates the rights of victims as offenders are given the correct
punishments.

Each of the about mentioned crimes have in one way or the other caused incidence that
we cannot reverse from. In this case, if technology is adopted and implemented without
hesitation then we are able to fight crime and reduce the rate at which it is happening.

2.3.1: Police Misconduct

In this case study, police have a different way of interacting with the public. It has been
observed that over the years most crimes reported go unattended or rather disappear in no

13
time. The crime reporting system should be able to capture this kind of scenarios as this
causes police brutality.
In assumption if a chain of command is followed when a crime is reported and actioned
on then this will reduce the rate at which police are able to mishandle crime. A study
done by IPOA shows that out of 5,000 respondents interviewed on police misconduct,
30% have experienced police assault and brutality. It also established that police
misconduct is on higher rates in the rural areas than in the urban areas due to the lack of
better technology to capture information on what is happening in the ground. (IPOA,
2013)

2.3.2: Police Leadership and organizational Structure.

Leadership is basically the process and ability to install confidence and support to others
in order to achieve a common goal. (Dubrin, 2006)
In the police department we may find interaction with subordinates’ abit crucial due to the
ranks given in the department. We find that leaders do not want to deal with junior offices
and in most cases this leads to police misconduct.
According to a report done by Amnesty International, we are able to understand where
the gap comes in when it comes to leadership in the police department. It was reported
that before the Kenyan Constitution was renewed in 2010, the Kenya Police service
operated under two independent service of administration. (International, 2013)
A police organizational structure will be way to deal with crime in that with formulation
of crime reporting systems information will be sent to the relevant department and this
will be an effective way of dealing with crime.
As we restructure the police organization we shall be able to separate departments
according to the work they handle. Crime is divided into: Normal Crime, Political-
economic crime and riotous.

2.4: Case study of Stakeholders

The current most reliable way of crime reporting in our country is via police investigation
and occurrence books on the police stations. According to a research report on Cops and
Crime in Kenya, the police in Kenya as elsewhere may be considered to have three major
tasks. Two of them, the service functions, are highly visible: To assist the citizens by
preventing or resolving crimes against persons and property and to arrest the perpetrators

14
and to assist the public in resolving interpersonal conflicts. The third, is mainly latent, but
will receive priority when conflicting with any other; that is to protect the elite against
potential insurrections or other small and medium scale violent threats directed against its
political authority (Throup, D. (2017). This became highly visible in Kenya during the
post 2007-election violence.
To contain large-scale threats is mainly the task of the military, however it has also been
established that as a country we face major crime blows and we are yet to get a permanent
solution to such areas. We take too much time blaming our police for lack of justice, but
we forget there are other parties involved. According to research done by a Criminal
justice student, stakeholders are defined as those affected by the criminal justice system;
in other words, who's at stake (Throup, D. (2017). This can include internal and external
stakeholders. 
Internal stakeholders can be considered the criminal justice system itself, which is
inclusive of police officers, judges, probation officers, parole officers, correctional
officers, lawyers, court personnel, and other individuals. External stakeholders are those
the criminal justice system serves and, in some way, affects. Identifying these
stakeholders brings valuable insight into the criminal justice system. (Clifton, 2011)

2.5: Case study of Crime Reporting Systems

Crime reporting has been left to various groups in our society, this has also played a big
role in the rate at which crime cases rise every other day. In modern days crime is
reported by the media, but with the current evolving technology an application would be
easy for reporting crime and providing effective response to the same.
Criminal investigation and reporting is a multi-faceted, problem-solving challenge.
Arriving at the scene of a crime, an officer is often required to rapidly make critical
decisions, sometimes involving life and death, based on limited information in a dynamic
environment of active and still evolving events. After a criminal event is over, the
investigator is expected to preserve the crime scene, collect the evidence, and devise an
investigative plan that will lead to the forming of reasonable grounds to identify and
arrest the person or persons responsible for the crime. To meet these challenges, police
investigators, through training and experience, learn investigative processes to develop
investigative plans and prioritize responses. (Plecas, 2016)

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2.6: Gaps Identified In Crime Reporting Systems

A study done by sociologist states that crime is most committed occur under certain
circumstances and are not also addresses due to the loop holes in our systems. The gaps
identified are as follows:
i. Corruption- This is one of the biggest challenge faced not only in the crime
department but every other department in the third world countries. In a case
where someone is able to report a crime which is actually recorded and the
criminal is arrested to show that justice has prevailed ends up with
disappointment. This is because most criminals have pocket the Law enforcers
and with just a little fee the criminal is able to walk freely.
ii. Limitations of feedback- In a case where a caller wants to report a crime and our
system been rotten as it is it either turns out the phone is not picked on the
receiving end or it is picked and the report is kept on hold. This generally gives
criminals the better chance to escape and most probably repeat the same crime
elsewhere.
iii. Network failure- Technology is fast replacing the old methods of crime reporting
and the major challenge with Technology is network. A victim might upload a
crime happening to the system but due to the network issues it will not reach the
necessary authorities for execution as fast a required. We need a very efficient
network for the crime reporting system to be effective and working.
iv. Threats and killings is also another challenge when it comes to crime reporting
systems be it online or physical appearance. Crimes are committed and when
reported key witnesses in cases disappear without a trace and in most cases they
end up dead. In other situations witnesses are threated of death or death of very
dear people to them and they end up not giving their testimonies.
2.7: Conceptual Framework

With the case studies observed from the Literature Review and the gaps identified, we
need a system that will be effective enough. In that the response time will not be a life
span. This study provides evidence of the importance of rapid response for certain types
of incidents. The results showed that increases in the likelihood of arresting at the scene
only applied to cases where:
i. A member of the public has actively interacted with the offender
ii. In cases where crime is reported late after it occurs.

16
 iii. In case where there were differences between the types of involvement crimes
speed.
In this case we are left with the concept that an application will report crime and also
provide evidence. In such manner the person can even take photos and upload to provide
affirmative information of the crime place.
The conceptual follow work should be enable flow of data as fast as possible to related
stakeholders and also create alerts as soon as possible.

2.8: Chapter Summary

From the literature reviewed, it has been observed that crime is a human experience, it
occurs at some location and that crime is a problem which must be managed. To properly
manage crime, quality information about crime, the environment it occurs and the socio-
demographic data of the victims of crime and the perpetrators of crime are necessary for
crime analysis. Crime, socio demographic and data stand out as major data which must be
used to achieve crime analysis, which is effective, efficient, detailed, encompassing and
of great use to the decision makers. It has also been revealed that a properly developed
Crime Information System (CIS) improves the management of information in a police
department. A Crime Information System (CIS) can be developed using different
information systems development methodologies such as structured information systems
development methodologies, which is used in this research. If our Kenyan Police are
trained in the use of Crime Information System in the management of crime, we will
make it easy for our people to have confidence in using the crime reporting applications.
All crimes are considered for crime analysis. There is a specific department for crime
analysis. From the experiences from other countries, it can be concluded that any country
would benefit from a Crime Information System if properly developed and the problem it
is going to solve is well defined and a detailed analysis of the existing system

17
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