COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND ITS EFFECT ON SECURITY AGENDA SETTING IN NAIROBI CITY COUNTY, KENYA
Felix Ingasia - Masters Student, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Wilson Muna - Lecturer, Kenyatta University. Kenya
ABSTRACT
The world, specifically developing nations such as Kenya are experiencing increased crime rate. Kenya specifically has experienced a surge in crime rate since 2014. Today, due to the dynamic and diverse nature of crime trends security agencies are engaging local communities through various strategies in security agenda setting. There is growing empirical studies on public participation, however, the link on how the framework affect community participation in security agenda setting in Kenya has not been adequately addressed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of community participation on security agenda setting in Westland Sub-County, Nairobi County. It was premised on three key theories, namely agenda setting theory, systems’ approach and stakeholders approach. The study used descriptive research design to collect primary data from the sub-county security team. The researcher used interview guides and semi-structured questionnaires to collect qualitative and quantitative data from a sample size of 49 respondents (1 SSIC members, 2 ACCs, 1 OCS, 5 chiefs, 7 assistant chiefs, 11 Nyumba Kumi clusters, 5 peace committees, and 18 village elders) selected within the scope area. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency distribution tables, calculating rates and tabulation, Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and content analysis approach for quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.The findings show that security agents majorly use information sharing to engage citizens in security agenda setting, especially by holding public meetings. Regarding intelligence gathering, the findings show that citizens share intelligence information more with security agents, making it easier to maintain peace within the scope area. Also, it was found that security agents hardly share security-related or intelligence information with members of the public due to confidentiality. The inferential analysis shows a positive correlation between dependent and independent variables.