Influence of Substance Abuse on Service Delivery by the Kenya Police Officers a Case Study of Nairobi City County, Kenya
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Date
2019
Authors
Ngeera, Jackson Mutiiria
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
Substance abuse is a problem to some serving police officers and hence delivering poor
services to members of the public. The problem could be contributed to by stress and
other occupational situations. However, the sub-cultural setup of the policing career
contributes to this vice in order to reduce stress. It is also reported that cases of suicides
and domestic violence among the police officers is attributed to drug abuse. The study,
was purposed to find out the correlation between substance abuse and service delivery
by the Kenya Police officers in Nairobi City County. The study shed light on measures
that are viable and can be taken to ensure proper service delivery and to curb substance
abuse among the Police Officers. The objectives are; establish the extent of substance
abuse by the Kenya Police Officers in Nairobi City County; identify the drivers of
substance abuse among the Kenya Police Officers in Nairobi City County; establish the
effects of substance abuse on service delivery by the Kenya Police Officers in Nairobi
City County and investigated the strategies that could be used to control substance abuse
by the Kenya Police Officers in Nairobi City County. This study used a cross-sectional
study design. Cross-section design looks at a portion of the population at one point in
time. For this study, different cadres of police in Nairobi City County were the target
population.2350 participants were sampled to participate in the study with a sample of
235 being used. Questionnaires were used for data collection which was administered
by the researcher. Analysis of quantitative data was done using descriptive statistics
with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 23. Qualitative data
was processed and analysed according to their content and segmented into themes.
Secondary data was also be used from the police data to get information on matters of
police turns over, absenteeism, disciplinary cases among others that relate to substance
abuse. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to make sense out of the
data. The findings show that police officers attend the job when they abuse the drug.
The results also indicate that abuse of drug affect the performance of police in service
delivery and productivity. The result indicates that there was significant relationship
between dependent variable (service delivery) and independent variable (Level of
productivity, Type of service delivery and Absenteeism) since the P-value is less than
0.05. It was concluded that partial and full absenteeism (lost man hours/ lost labour
days) cost the police department as a government a lot of money at the police force.
From the findings of this study, it is concluded that alcohol and drug abuse impact
negatively on the service delivery among police officers. Also, Exposure or awareness
of alcohol advertising may lead to heavier or more frequent abuse of drug among police
officers adults. The study recommends that there is need for the law enforcement sector
in liaison with stakeholders to institute stringent policy mechanisms and capacity
development programmes to curb alcohol and drug abuse among police officers.
Description
A Research Project Submitted to the School of Humanities
And Social Sciences in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement
for the Award of the Degree of Master of Public Policy and
Administration (MPPA) School of Social Sciences of Kenyatta
University
Keywords
Substance Abuse, Service Delivery, Kenya Police Officers, Nairobi City County, Kenya