Chapter 2

Nine case studies of crime prevention initiatives

Introduction

The crime prevention case studies in Nairobi in this report are structured around the following issues: the mandates and partnerships of the role players in crime prevention; crime prevention approaches; strategy processes and their descriptions; implementation; best practice; lessons learnt; planning considerations; and benefits for local government.

It was found that there was considerable diversity in the crime prevention institutions in Nairobi, with differing levels of organisational maturity and effectiveness in executing their set tasks. One of the consequences of this state of affairs for the study is that the desired levels of information for comparative analysis from the nine organisations could not be attained.

An in-depth scrutiny of the great variety and diversity of these organisations would have yielded invaluable lessons in the fluid state of crime prevention in Nairobi.¹ However, under limitations of time, I had to select representative samples of organisations from the 'clusters' of crime prevention organisations, which have been outlined in the research methodology above.

List of Case Studies

Case study 1: The Immediate Technology Development group (East Africa) and the Safer Cuties Program

Case study 2: The Kenya Police Force

Case study 3: Nairobi city council inspectorate

Case study 4: We can do it

Case study 5: Nairobi Business District Association

Case study 6: Securicor Kenya Limited

Case study 7: Secucenter LTD

Case study 8: Zungu Zungu Vigilante group - Shouri Moyo

Case study 9: Mathare Progressive Youth Group

There are indeed a large number of crime and crime prevention organisations in the city which I hardly touch here, such as the Criminal Justice System and NGOs with similar interests. There are neighbourhood clusters of small gated communities; an estimate would indicate that they possibly run collectively into the thousands. Similarly there are a handful of vigilante groups I came across but have not been mentioned in this study. Time constraints bared the study from further investigations of the above crime prevention efforts – all playing their part for a safer and securer city.