https://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/jurnal-humaniora HUMANIORA Vol. 31, No. 3 (October 2019) Crime Prevention Through Community Policing Interventions: Evidence from Harar City, Eastern Ethiopia Melese Teferi Adugna 1 ; Tesfaye Zeleke Italemahu 2 1 Lecturer of Sociology, Haramaya University, Ethiopia; 2 Center for Environment and Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia Corresponding Author: meleseqirqos@gmail.com ABSTRACT In Ethiopia, community policing has been announced ofcially as a national program in 2005 E.C with the impetus to nullify crimes at lower tiers. There have been growing reports of prevailing crimes in Jenila district of Harar city. Accordingly, this study endeavors to scrutinize the practices of community policing and associated challenges in the study site. A mixed research deign was used to fetch out primary and secondary data sets. Hence, the participants’ views were captured through questionnaires, key informant interviews and focused group discussions. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, bar graph and percentages. The fnding of the study revealed that a greater proportions of the respondents recognized that community policing practices had contributed in preventing crimes; burglary 94 (27%) and robbery 77 (22%) as most frequently recurring and reported types of crimes in the city. While community policing structures and concerned actors operate to smoothly run the programs, there were cropping up predicaments at the grass root levels. Limited awareness among the residents, inadequate fnancial resources and professionally ill-qualifed human power were reported as major obstructions. In the face of increasing crimes, both in terms of intensity and types on the one hand, and intricate challenges to penetrate through on the other hand, the communities of residents aspire to dive deep with a sense of ownership and exploit the opportunities for intensifying the programs stated in community policing programs. Eventually, there was need to move in concerted manner to lessen the impacts of crimes in Jenila district of Harar city. Keywords: community policing; crime prevention; eastern Ethiopia; harar city INTRODUCTION Community policing has been approached and practiced quite diferently over time and within distinct contexts (Cossyleon, 2019). For Okeshola and Mudiare (2013), community policing entailed a paradigm shift that seeks to concentrate on constructive engagements with people who are benefciaries of the police service and renegotiate the contract between the people and the police. Community policing falls on the premise that police alone cannot control crime and disorder and promote residents’ quality of life (Fridell and Wycof, 2004). Accordingly, community policing helps to prevent crime but it is not consistent in its practices (Jeremey and Cox, 2008). While community policing initiatives have attained remarkable improvements in certain aspects, it does not seem to be the case for all communities in engaging in it because of the difculty to get uniformity in crime prevention (Somerville,2014). As such, based on its defnition of crime as an act prohibited and punishable by the law in its Penal Code (2006; Article 23 (1), the Ethiopian government had designed community policing as a strategy in preventing crime and urged the active involvement of all parties regardless of their cultural diferences. Hence, the goal of this article was to analyze the practices of community policing in crime prevention along with underlying challenges in Jinela district of https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.v31i3.43880 page 326—337