Since the day Saudi Arabia was founded, its highly centralised and paramilitary police organisation remained immune to scrutiny, and police performance and their relationship with the public have remained uncharted territories. But lately, in response to leaking reports about rising crime levels and an escalating social control crisis, writers affiliated to the police organisation were quick to deny that a real crime problem exists. However, some of those writers do admit that a serious social disorder problem is now brewing, and they find an urgent need to address the crisis. According to them, any effective response requires a community orientated policing strategy to be applied immediately, even without debate or planning. The statement above raises three important questions. First, does a social control problem really exist? Secondly, if yes, would a community policing (CP) approach address it? And third, are the police and the public ready for change? To answer those questions, quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from a wide range of sources. Results obtained from the data show clearly that the police are not the effective crime fighters they claim they are. Further, although it has been found that the Saudi policing system is not without problems, a community policing approach, at least in the sense it is understood in the west, is incompatible with the Saudi culture. Reasons for this incompatibility have been examined, and suggestions to improve the Saudi police performance have been made.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:521233 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Sharaf, Zuhair Abdul-Rahman |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=134000 |
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