Overview
The Centre of Criminology's Physical Security Programme has four primary areas of enquiry: police reform; plural policing, urban security and policing and crime prevention.
The Police Reform project, led by Elrena van der Spuy, focuses on issues relating to the reform of the public police in Africa more generally and Southern Africa more specifically. The research aims to contribute to the development of African police studies by coming to terms with the state of the public police in Africa; the policy frameworks in terms of which police reform is articulated, and the structural constraints confronting such reform. A deliberate attempt is also made to situate the discussion on police reform in the crime context by exploring the challenges confronting the police's role in crime control and crime prevention in Africa. South-South cooperation in police-building and mapping recent initiatives relating to the insertion of police in peacekeeping operations are also a focus of this research.
The Plural Policing Project, led by Julie Berg, explores emerging institutions of polycentric governance, both for delivering security governance and for governance accountability. The Project aims to identify, test and reflect upon alternative approaches to the provision or improvement of urban security in the South African context. Two important foci have been accountability within plural policing (in particular in relation to private security) and the emergence of new and innovative institutions of security governance. An important theme within the latter focus has been exploring Improvement Districts as a significant innovation within the governance of security.
The Urban Security Project is working with the City of Cape Town to explore the potential of neighbourhood-based Improvement Districts as security nodes. This has included exploring the value of a 'Neighbourhood Coordination' nodal policing model developed by the Dutch Police. Muizenberg, Nyanga and Gordon's Bay are the focus areas of the study.