Author(s)

Francess Dufie Azumah¹, Joana Obeng Nyarko², Samuel Krampah¹, John Onzaberigu Nachinaab¹

¹Department of Sociology and Social Work, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.
²Institute of Distance Learning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.

For effective crime control, the roles of informants are critical. The police and community members’ relation is needed for the police continuous reliance on informants’ information on crime. This has been the principle for fighting crime in many parts of the developed countries in the World. The study sought to examine the relations between community and police in providing protection for informants in crime investigation within communities (Tepa and Hwediem) in Brong-Ahafo Region, placing much emphasis on the relationship between community members and police in providing information for combating crime, the effectiveness of informants’ information in fighting crime and measures that could improve the relationship between community members and police in protecting informants. Social survey design was adopted. Cluster sampling and simple random were used to select 400 respondents (community members and police). Quantitative approach was adopted. The study found that informants were relatively fewer in the community. The study found that respondents who reported criminal cases to the police indicated that their act was very important in fighting crime. It was concluded that a good relationship between community members and police was needed to protect informants. The results showed that majority of the respondents strongly agreed informants’ identities should not be revealed to suspects. The researchers recommended that since effective communication is fundamental to positive police-community relationships, the Government and Ghana Police Service (GPS) should seek to provide its officers with an understanding of language diversity. The researchers then again recommended that officers of the GPS should be provided with an in-service training by the Government and GPS to improve community policing and trust building.

Police, Informant, Community, Crime

Azumah, F. , Nyarko, J. , Krampah, S. and Nachinaab, J. (2019) Community-Police Relations and Informant Identity Protection: Evidence from Some Selected Communities in the Brong-Ahafo Region, Ghana. Current Urban Studies, 7, 228-246. doi: 10.4236/cus.2019.72011.