Campus Security and Safety Models: Statistical Empirical Analysis from a Ghanaian Tertiary Institution

Abstract

All over the world security challenges faced by our traditional settlements is likewise in the university and college campuses. For this reason campus safety and security has become topical issue of research since parents are concerned about their wards and educational stakeholders risk losing loosing students because of crime and violence. With the influx of distance education students on the campus during the weekends and holidays, the issue of security becomes even more paramount. The current study model students’ perception of campus security personnel’s using  procedural fairness, security effectiveness and trust in security response construct while fear of crime as well as security corruption are used as predictor construct. PLS-SEM is the quantitative approach used to investigate effect security corruption and students fear of crime on security procedural fairness, security effectiveness and students’ trust in security. The study randomly selected 350 regular and distance students, however 327 returned questionnaires resulting to 93% response rate. The study revealed that students’ fear of crime and security corruption predicts 71.8% of students’ trust in security. Furthermore, security corruption and students fear of crime account for 31.2% of students’ perceived security personnel’s procedural fairness. Finally, the study found that security corruption and students fear of crime accounts for 39.5% of the variability in security personnel’s effectiveness. The study concluded that students’ fear of  crime positively affect their trust in campus security, however, the corruption on the part of campus security negatively affect students’ trust in campus security, security personnel’s procedural fairness and effectiveness. The authors recommend that training programmes should be put in place regularly to sensitise personnel’s on the effect of corruption on their integrity and profession.

Keywords: Fear of crime, Security effectiveness, Security corruption, procedural fairness

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-12-07

Publication date: April 30^th 2019