Why heavy-handed policing won’t work for lockdowns in most African countries

In South Africa, this is despite clear instructions to the contrary from President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Violations of human rights to this extent are not warranted as they fail to consider the difficulty of compliance for many citizens. They may also be counterproductive, resulting in more public order problems and even in violent protests. This has already happened in  some parts of the continent.

The excess use of force also alienates police from the community, reduces trust in police, and reduces the legitimacy of authority in the eyes of ordinary people.

Policing strategies for pandemics should be highly contextual and dependent on the capability, capacity, history and local legitimacy of the police. A strict securitised enforcement model that attempts to enforce, to the letter, whatever the government suggests, is unlikely to work in many contexts.

Police should be using more contextual harm-reduction approaches. Their responses to violations should be proportionate to the circumstances, which may make compliance untenable.

In “harm-reduction approaches”, police would attempt to clearly communicate social-distancing techniques, but would not use forced compliance. They would tolerate curfew breaking, instead seeking to inform and guide those breaking curfews, and achieve compliance that way.

To achieve active compliance, it is often more effective to pose problems to a community and ask the community to come up with the solution than to seek to impose a solution devised elsewhere. From a procedural justice perspective, this gives the community an active “voice”.

Similarly, authorities need to give communities explanations for particular decisions.

This harm reduction approach to policing allows for the co-creation of solutions between citizens and state.

It stands the best chance of effectiveness, given the impossibility of implementing the kind of lockdown that appears to have been effective elsewhere.

A securitised approach is unhelpful where those regulations are either impossible to implement or ineffective in the context, due to overcrowding and poor, shared sanitation.

Heavy-handed policing will be recognised as unreasonable and will damage the credibility and legitimacy of both the police and the state at a time when trust is of utmost importance. This will likely reduce public cooperation, leading many to disregard public health messages.

By Karl Roberts, Alex Broadbent, and Benjamin T H Smart for The Conversation.

(85 VIEWS)