BOTSWANA POLICE SERVICE RANKED NO. 1 IN AFRICA
The Botswana Police Service has been ranked no. 1 in Africa and 47 out of 127 countries in the World Internal Security and Police Index (WISPI), released by the Institute of Economic and Peace (IEP).
The stated aim of the WISPI, which was commissioned by the International Police Science Association with the support of the Sharjah Police Department, is to:
“Firstly, measure security provider performance across the four domains of internal security: capacity, process, legitimacy and outcomes.
“Secondly, to see how these domains relate to each other and finally to track trends in these domains over time, and to inform the work of security providing agencies, researchers, and practitioners in the field of peace and conflict studies, criminology, and police studies.”
The Index thus aims to measure the ability of the security apparatus within a country to respond to internal security challenges, both now and in the future.
For the purposes of the Index, ‘security apparatus’ predominantly refers to the police, although a number of indicators also touch upon the ability of the military, the judicial system, and the private sector to address internal security issues.
WISPI consists of 16 indicators across four different domains: capacity, effectiveness, legitimacy, and outcomes. The full list of indicators across the four domains of Capacity, Process, Legitimacy and Outcomes.
Botswana’s composite score for all indicators was 0.6876. The highest ranking country in the Index was Singapore with a score of 0.8978, while the lowest was Nigeria with 0.2554.
The report further noted that while Sub-Saharan African generally underperformed:
“There are some sub-Saharan African countries that perform well on the Index, most noticeably Botswana, which ranked 47th, and Rwanda, which ranked 50th. Both Botswana and Rwanda perform strongly on the process and legitimacy domains, with Botswana in particular having low levels of reported bribe payments to police, and high levels of confidence in police at the local level.”
World Internal Security and Police Index is a companion to the IEP’s Positive Peace Report and Index, in which it was recently noted that Botswana is one of only two countries in the world to have graduated to a “high peace” ranking over the past decade.
Botswana was ranked 43 out of 163 countries in the IEP’s 2017 Positive Peace Index and 27 out of 163 countries in its 2017 Global Peace Index.
