Abstract

Gauteng province has been experiencing a substantial increase in some crime categories between 2011 and 2015. These include among others, murder, drug related offenses as well as aggravated robbery. The leadership of law enforcement agencies as well as the provincial government has since realised that the application traditional policing methods alone will not succeed to decease crime, hence there is a concerted effort to encourage police law agencies in the province to intensify implementation of e-policing systems and smart policing initiatives. That been said, it is not yet clear what e-policing and smart policing means for the police. The purpose of this paper is to explore meaning these concepts from the point of view police services in the province, policing experts and representatives private sector organisations who participated in the research. The paper relied on literature review and semi-structured interviews to collect data. It was found that e-policing and smart policing means different things to different respondents. Given the dilemma of differences in the conceptualisation of these concepts, this paper propose a working definition of smart policing in order to enhance co-ordinated application as well as monitoring and evaluation of smart policing initiative