Public-Police-Partnership to improve safety and security measures in Higher Education Institutions: A systematic study South Africa
Public-Police-Partnership to improve safety and security measures in Higher Education Institutions: A systematic study South Africa

Summary/Abstract: Safety and security are the most basic needs for humans and societies. This is the most fundamental need, and their absence renders individuals vulnerable. The safety/security measures are ranked second (after physiological needs) by Abraham Maslow’s classic work on human needs ranked. This paper uses a systematic study to establish the essentiality of public-police partnership (PPP) in improving safety and security measures in higher education institutions (HEIs). Selected common crimes (sexual harassment, Gender-based violence, and theft) are going to form the crux of this paper. This qualitative paper followed a systematic review, as a research design restricted from 2015 to 2024. The new Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and MetaAnalyses (PRISMA) reporting guidelines of 2020 supported this research design and approach. The Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) was adopted to locate existing scholarly accredited journals, books, print and online newspaper reports, internet sources, social science databases, and governmental documents/gazettes for data collection. The findings of this paper emphasise the ignored collaboration of different stakeholders in the HEIs exist. Moreover, the safety and security, investigative team, Community Policing Forums (CPFs) and private security companies, and South African Police Service (SAPS) are working in silos to achieve efficient campus safety. Their significance in fighting various crimes within university premises is undermined. It has also been established that basic security measures training for the university population is unfounded, resulting in many students falling victim to crime. This paper recommends that the HEIs students, when walking at night, must avoid walking alone and should walk in groups; when walking, they must avoid having headphones, as they lessen their ability to be vigilant and become suitable targets owing to their valuable asserts. The relevant stakeholders should normalise working together through the application of the PPP. This paper addresses the gap in the existing literature to enforce collaborations of relevant stakeholders using the PPP in the HEIs.

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