In May last year, a small village in Gatsibo District made headlines after it emerged that it had not recorded a single crime since the beginning of 2017. Kagarama village in Gitoki Sector, Gatsibo was declared a ‘crime free’ village thanks to a homegrown initiative known as ‘clustering’, which saw groups of 15 households create a strong social network that saw members regularly visit each other and get acquainted with the goings on in each of the households in their respective cluster. Thanks to this arrangement, any suspicious activity in the village is busted in time, strangers and those in their company or hosting them are quickly identified, residents get to know which student missed school and why, while drug trafficking and substance abuse have been dealt with in the village. This has also fostered strong family values as no household wants to be the villain of the village by falling short of the acceptable behaviour defined by the residents themselves. But, most importantly, this innovation allows for households to know each other and to be there for one another, thereby promoting cohesion, camaraderie and a sense of belonging. Local leaders in this village say that they came up with the initiative to help bring about ownership of security and development programmes since a ‘crime-free’ village would primarily benefit the residents themselves. The initiative has since inspired a nationwide effort to rid villages of crime, the main focus of the ongoing ‘Police Week’ drive. At the launch of the month-long campaign last week, the Rwanda National Police announced that it had identified several villages across the country that were exemplary in matters community policing, and would recognise these villages by, among others, giving them fully equipped, newly constructed administrative offices. The idea is to popularise such community policing models as that of Kagarama village and to encourage other villages to follow suit. The concept of a crime-free village provokes skepticism. But if the experience and success story of Kagarama is anything to go by, there is no reason to believe that other villages cannot register the same achievement. Crime-free villages is an ambitious but realistic target. All it takes is for local leaders to genuinely commit to this objective and fully involve the residents – and with the backing of security organs and other relevant authorities.
