Research & Innovation
Newsletter
Volume 2 l Issue 3 - 2024
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Building police capability in
child protection in Kenya
Page 9
Full article published in: Child Abuse & Neglect, Volume 147, January | 2024
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Lydia Davenport
Lecturer
Policing and Security
Rabdan Academy
Dr. Eric Halford
Assistant Professor
Policing & Security Program
Rabdan Academy
Building police capability in
child protection in Kenya
Existing literature illustrates a high prevalence of child protection
issues throughout Kenya. This is adjoined by additional research
detailing issues of corruption, cultural rationalization and the
potential lack of capability to deal with the problem in existing law
enforcement practices. There is no specific research that
investigates the establishment or operational function of a child
protection department within law enforcement in Kenya. This study
aims to address this research gap by exploring the establishment of
an overseas initiative to support the development of a child
protection function in the National Police Service of Kenya and to
analyse the conditions in developing the project.
The results evidenced the need to focus in three key areas when
building child protection capability overseas to create a successful
function; the requirement to tailor context specific understanding of
the culture and operating environment, the need to understand the
current and potential capabilities within this context, and the
importance of obtaining leadership and governance support from
appropriate stakeholders both internally and externally. These
themes begin to develop a base for the development of international
practice for the establishment of overseas child protection policing
functions