The adoption of mobile technology as a tool for situational crime prevention in Kenya

Abstract

The adoption of mobile technology in crime prevention has substantially grown across the world. However, this is not the case in Kenya, because the public still have to go from one police station to another to report crimes and to receive general services from the police. The crime records are usually recorded manually in police Occurrence Book (OB) and therefore determining the accurate crime trends and rates of reported crimes has proved to be a major hurdle in crime prevention for the Kenya police. This study aimed at developing a mobile application that would aid the Kenyan public to report crimes to the nearest police station, receive alerts on new crime spot areas, query information about arrested individuals and encourage community policing. The study also involved the development of a back-end web-based prototype that incorporated a digitised OB and a criminal database. The mobile Android application was tested on various devices and the test results ascertained. The study revealed that most users would use the mobile-police application because of convenience, reduced fear of victimization and ease of use.