Professor Ken Attafuah, a criminologist and a lawyer, has said that law enforcement was not the responsibility of the police or the state alone, but a process that needed the involvement of the citizenry.
"Law enforcement is an incremental measure by the citizenry to involve in the process and not the responsibility of the police or state alone where the citizenry had become observers expecting a particular group to act"
Prof. Attafuah therefore wants the citizenry to feel that obligation to volunteer information to the police on crimes in the society, adding that research had shown that citizen's tip-off to the police accounted for 90 percent of resolved crimes all over the world.
Prof. Attafuah who granted an interview to the press after a passing-out ceremony of new police recruits in Koforidua on Armed robbery and Security in Ghana said the involvement of the citizenry in law enforcement was more paramount given the numerical strength of the police.
According to Prof. Attafuah the country needs a minimum of 19,000 police personnel, an optimum of the United Nations (UN) standard to enforce law and improve security in any given country but Ghana currently has only 22, 000 police personnel.
Prof. Attafuah who just authored a book; "Armed robbery in Ghana" expressed worry about the attitude of the citizenry in handling crimes, especially armed robbery because to him, all the crimes being perpetrated in the society were witnessed by people and the criminals also lived amongst the populace.
Throwing more light on crimes in Ghana, he attributed the situation to disenchanted youth who had weak links to family values and society and failed by the state to address their concerns.
He said, "these are people who had been abandon by parents and failed by the state systems therefore have no checks on their lives and predominantly constitutes the urban under-class in the society and for them it does not take anything to be wicked."
Prof. Attafuah said, although armed robbery could not be justified under any circumstance, it had become a canker eating into the fabric of society, therefore, there was the need for every citizen to learn strategies on how to behave and defend oneself in the cause of an attack.