The South African Police Service (SAPS) currently stands at a critical point in its 19-year history, with the conduct of police officers towards citizens affecting their ability to reduce crime, said head of the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Gareth Newham.

He spoke on Wednesday at the fourth ISS international conference on national and international perspectives on crime reduction and criminal justice. “Policing challenges are at the forefront of our minds in many respects in South Africa right now. The SAPS currently stand at a critical point in its 19-year democratic history because it has arguably reached the limit of its ability to reduce crime using its current 'forceful' orientation,” said Newham.

He noted that the importance of police conduct was not always fully appreciated. “The more disrespectful police officers are towards suspects and citizens generally, the less people will comply with the law. Therefore, changing police style may be as important for the reduction of crime as focused policing substance,” he said.

Newham emphasised that the best way to improve the legitimacy of the police was to focus on crime prevention, rather than on crime combating.

“Usually, the first response to a policing problem by the leaders in a country is to simply point out that it is a case of ‘bad apples’  – all we need to do is identify the problem people, remove them from the system and everything will be fine. It is never acknowledged as a problem with the actual police structure, in the way officers are trained or managed,” Newham lamented. This, he believed, removed the pressure off the police leadership to actually fix the problem.

This “bad apple” misapprehension does not recognise the deep-rooted structural challenges that face policing. “In order to get the police to behave differently is an organisational and administrative responsibility that goes well beyond simply removing the “bad apples” from the force,” he explained.

If a police officer is badly trained and managed and they start acting badly in the streets by misusing their authority and power, simply removing them from the system is not going to stop other police officers who were trained and managed in the same way from behaving similarly.

It is critically important that the senior management in the police take full responsibility and are held directly accountable for the way police officers are hired, vetted, trained and managed, promoted, rewarded and encouraged, to create a professional ethos, he said. This was not something that could be outsourced to an independent investigative body like the Independent Police Investigative Directorate or the Human Rights Commission. Rather, this was something that had to be taken seriously by the National Police Commissioner.

Newham’s main recommendation for improving police performance and the rule of law was the effective implementation of the National Development Plan. “Officers must be rewarded and promoted on merit, not on their political connections,” he concluded.