Effects of occupational strain among poiice officers to the general security of a community: a case of muranga town, muranga county, Kenya
Abstract
Strain at work in any profession negatively affects the people working and overall
performance of employees. This in turn has a negative impact on production or quality
of services being offered. This applies to police officers especially those working in
major towns in Kenya where crime rate is too high and cost of living is unimaginably
high. According to GOK crime report of 2014, Murang’a town being one of the Kenyan
major towns has been rated as having highest crime levels culminated by illegal
groupings like Mungiki and Gaza boys. Among the major crimes recorded in Murang’a
include violent robberies, theft of motor vehicles, house breakings and burglary,
kidnapping, bank robberies, homicides and gender violence among others. Reasons
behind high crime rate in Murang’a town have not been clearly established so far. Many
scholars have tried to establish causes of crime in Murang’a town and among the listed
causes include poverty levels, population growth and proximity to Kenyan capital
Nairobi among others but none has considered effects of occupational strain among
police officers in the course of performance of their duties. Occupational strain among
police officers could be having adverse effects on performance by police officers and in
turn negatively affect services they render to the public and this may lead to high crime
rate and general insecurity. Failure to address causes of occupational strain among
police undermines effort to curb insecurity in our major towns in Kenya. Strained
officers are poorly motivated and generally demoralized hence poor service delivery.
The focus of this paper, therefore, is to build greater understanding of the causes of
occupational strain among police officers in Murang’a town, effects of such strain to
general security of Murang’a town and possible measures that can be undertaken to
address the problem of occupational strain among police officers working in Murang’a
town. The paper briefly presents findings of research conducted in Murang’a town over
the same topic and recommendations thereto, in order to address the problem of
occupational strain among police officers and improve their welfare and wellbeing. All
this is aimed at motivating them to provide good services and to make them more
effective which in turn will improve security of Murang’a town.
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