Introduction

Robbery in Ghana, a West African nation of over 30 million people has emitted immense danger, fear, and panic to the citizenry. The robbery situation had compelled some foreign countries to warn their citizens to exercise caution when visiting Ghana, and Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo to shorten his/an official visit to the USA to return home on Saturday March 3, 2018 to address the situation. At the time of the public outcry, over 200 robbery incidents, some of which had ended in murder of the victims and law enforcement personnel had been recorded between January and March 2018 alone.

Informed by the crime pattern, routine activities, lifestyles, hot spots, hot products, and opportunity theories, this study examined the robbery incidence, volume, trends, and patterns in Ghana from 2014 to 2017 with the view to discovering the annual, monthly, and regional variation of this crime. Also examined or ‘mapped’ out were the robbery locations/addresses, the robbery-related felonies, including deaths, rapes, and injuries, and the lynching of suspects and the suspects arrested. Strategies to ameliorate the robbery situation beyond the traditional reactive policing were explored.

Data and information

The data for the study were the robbery cases for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 published by the Criminal Data Service Bureau (CDSB) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), as well as the census data for the same years, derived from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).

The data covered the then ten regions of Ghana. Until 2018, Ghana consisted of ten administrative regions. Although for law enforcement purposes, the GPS separated the Tema Metro Area from the Greater Accra region to constitute an eleventh law enforcement region, this study maintained the official ten political/administrative regions, where Tema is part of the Greater Accra region. The ten post-2019 regions captured in the current study were Ashanti, Bring Ahafo (now the Ahafo, Bono East, and Bring Ahafo), Central, Eastern, Greater Accra, Northern (now the Northern, Savannah, and North East), Upper East, Upper West, Volta (now the Oti and Volta), and Western (now Western and Western North) regions.

Finally, because it is doubtful and highly unlikely that any robbery occurred at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters in Accra, the cases listed in the official GPS statistics as occurring at the CID Headquarters were added to the Greater Accra data. The official police data included offense locations or “flashpoints”/addresses; the area data, that is, the region, city/town/village, and time of day, month and the year of the robbery incident; and the robbery-related deaths, robbery-related rapes, and robbery-related injuries, as well as the apprehension and clearance rates for each of the years under study.

Before examining the data, it must be reiterated that the difficulties faced in official crime data acquisition and oftentimes, the unreliable and incomplete nature of the data themselves have been captured in previous works (see Appiahene-Gyamfi (2007); Appiahene‐Gyamfi (2003)). Although the situation appears to have improved, caution must always be exercised when examining any crime data produced by the GPS as several setbacks and shortcomings persist. Perhaps, the most conspicuous of the shortcomings of the official police data include the lack of explanation for including “Cases Refused” and why such/the “Cases Refused” are part of the total crimes reported although according to the GPS, they were “refused on grounds of being false, trivial or civil in nature” and/or, “warranted no further police attention” (Ghana Police Service, 2020).

The inclusion of the robbery flashpoints/addresses in the GPS Reports is laudable, but some of the addresses presented could hardly be located. For instance, robbery flashpoints like, “Awoshie behind Odorgono SHS,” “Frafraha,” “Ayigbe-Town junction,” “a spot near the Kaneshie Kingsway 1 & 2 School,” “a spot at Maglab Hotel-Kwashibu” “a spot at Flat-Top-Abeka” “from Lapaz to Oyarefa” (in the Greater Accra region), “a section of the road nea[r]” The highest robberies, 1772 cases, were recorded in 2017, and the lowest, 1116 cases, were recorded in 2014. The daily average robberies in 2015 and 2016 were 4 cases each. In 2014 the average was 3 cases per day and in 2017 the average was 5 cases per day.

The robbery rates, that is the ratio of amount of robberies per 100,000 of population in 2014 was 4.1 persons. While in 2015 the rate was 5 persons per 100,000 of population, in 2016 the rate was 4.9 persons per 100,000 of population and in 2017 it was 6 persons per 100,000 of population. The monthly breakdown shows that, cumulatively the highest robberies were recorded in December, 573 cases, followed by November, 526 cases, September, 525 cases and May, 506 cases.

Less than 500 robbery cases were recorded for each of the rest of the months. The month of February recorded the lowest robberies, 389 cases. An examination of each of the individual years showed that robberies were highest in December in 2015, where 186 cases were recorded, followed by 2017, which recorded 169 cases. In 2014, the month of August recorded the highest robberies, 116 cases, but in 2016 the month of May recorded the highest robberies, 147 cases. The number of robberies recorded in December 2015 (186 cases, 13.1%), 2016 (130 cases, 9.3%) and 2017 (169 cases, 9.5%) make the 88 cases, (7.8%) recorded in December 2014 rather suspicious.

Some robbers attacked their victims on the thoroughfares, street corners, pedestrian pathways, marketplaces, and in front of banks, forex bureaus, ATMs, and gas stations. Other robbers either attacked or accosted and escorted their victims, especially workers who were walking to or from work alone, to the nearest ATMs to forcibly withdraw their monies. Some robbers trailed unsuspecting victims in their private cars, and in public buses to vulnerable spots to rob them. Some robbers erected roadblocks to stop oncoming vehicles and robbed the occupants; others used vehicles and motor bicycles, sometimes stolen, to trail their victims to their homes to rob them, but others waited/ambushed their victims as they entered or exited from their homes. Where the robbers gained access to the homes of the victims, the entire household or residents were robbed, and the female victims sometimes raped. Some victims were shot at the entrance of their homes in front of their families and bystanders after being robbed. In some attacks/incidents, the robbers pretended to have been hit by a vehicle to get oncoming vehicles to stop for them to rob the occupants. Some robbers feigned that their vehicles had developed mechanical problems or flat tires to get the oncoming vehicles to stop for them to rob the occupants, while others barricaded the roads to get oncoming vehicles to stop so they could rob the occupants.

Some robbers displayed fake vehicle number plates when trailing their victims to obscure places to rob them; others used either motorbikes or stolen vehicles to trail their victims to vulnerable spots to rob them. Other robbers attacked taxi/uber and bus drivers that were conveying them. Some robbers had co-offenders or accomplice passengers on the buses and taxis they robbed. The accomplices were alleged to have asked the drivers to stop at a certain spot for them to ease themselves only for their robbery co-offenders to emerge from their hideouts to rob.

Some robbers robbed fuel stations and cocoa buying company sheds and cashiers. Those who displayed visible cues like wearing expensive clothes and jewelry were among the easy robbery targets. Some victims were attacked on market days because they were aware that traders carry physical cash during the market days, as well as during funeral celebrations when funeral donations had been collected, and during church activities when tithes and offerings had either been collected or parishioners were carrying monies on them. In 2017, for instance, nine (9) out of the 1,772 suspects arrested by the police were classified as being policemen. Ghanaians are constantly apprehensive because of the alleged complicity of some law enforcement personnel.

Discussion 

The theories assert that criminal events are not randomly distributed, but are temporary and spatially distributed or clustered. The theories argue that crime and delinquency relate to the unique characteristics and features of the built environment within which they occur. Crime commission and crime rates differ from region to region and within the same region, and from city to city and within the same city. Crime patterns can be measured by their magnitude or mix over time. The mix of crimes may differ from region to region, city to city, and one area of a region or city to another due to several factors, including socioeconomic conditions.

Consequently, studies have sought to delineate how much crime occurs in any society, how much of a specific crime occurred in specific times and seasons, and across centuries, set of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and even seconds in a specific society. Scholars are interested in the types of crimes that occur frequently or infrequently within any given region, district, neighborhood, and street block being studied.

The crime pattern theory posits that individuals develop templates about the social and physical environments within which they operate through their daily routines and activities. The routine activities of offenders define the areas where, and the times when they are likely to commit crimes, and a victim’s lifestyle can alter crime trends and spatial patterning, and foster criminal commute. The socioeconomic condition of a neighborhood or area in explaining crime rates and crime mobility quotients/triangles and patterns, in addition to lifestyles, routines, and activities of residents and patrons of that neighborhood have been emphasized. Consequently, the everyday routines and activities, and lifestyles of people necessitate the convergence in time and space of motivated offenders and availability of “hot products,” that is, vulnerable or suitable targets, which the absence of capable guardians facilitates or heightens the opportunity for a crime to be committed.

In Ghana, the legitimate daily routines and activities, and lifestyles of people clearly exposed them or accentuated their vulnerabilities and/or created the opportunities for the robbers to target them. The robbers could be said to be opportunists who took advantage of the victims’ vulnerabilities and lack of effective and capable guardians, especially the lack of police (and in several cases, bystander) presence, to rob the victims. Most of the victims were white-collar and blue-collar workers who were either returning from work or heading to their legitimate work; small businesspeople like traders, hawkers, and retailers; vehicular passengers/travelers who were either transporting their merchandise or traveling to other parts of the country to transact their businesses; and mobile money transfer vendors or operators who were either attacked in their kiosks and stores or on their business locations/premises.

Robbery, an expropriative and serious acquisitive crime, whose primary goal is pecuniary gain, involves a direct confrontation by the robber, often with an element of surprise, to overwhelm and/or overpower the victim. Because of its nature or modus operandi, some robbery incidents could and often result in death or serious injuries to both the victims and the robbers. In Ghana, robbery is a first-degree felony crime (Ghana Criminal Code, Act 29, 1960, §149, as Amended, Criminal Offences (Amendment) Act, {2012}, Act 849 & Amendment 646, {2003}).

In Ghana, “Whoever commits robbery is guilty of an offence and shall be liable, upon conviction on trial summarily or on indictment, to imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years, and where the offence is committed by the use of an offensive weapon or offensive missile, the offender shall upon conviction be liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than fifteen years” (§149 {1}).

In Ghana, “A person who steals a thing is guilty of robbery if in and for the purpose of stealing the thing, he uses any force or causes any harm to any person, or if he uses any threat or criminal assault or harm to any person, with intent thereby to prevent or overcome the resistance of that or of other person to the stealing of the thing” (§150). An offensive weapon is, “any article made or adapted for use to cause injury to the person or damage to property or intended by the person who has the weapon to use it to cause injury or damage” and offensive missile “includes a stone, brick or any article or thing likely to cause harm, damage or injury if thrown” (§149, {3}). In recent times, rather than stones and bricks, most robberies in Ghana now involve deadly assault weapons/firearms, including the AK-47.

The Ghanaian law does not apply the ‘hierarchy rule,’ where a suspect is punished for the most serious offense committed during a robbery or the ‘multiple’ offenses ‘rule,’ where a suspect is punished for all the crimes committed during a robbery (Act, 29, 1960 {As Amended}, Illustrations §21 & §151).

In September 1982, the Ghana government created the Anti Armed Robbery Squad (AARS) taskforce within the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) to, “fight” armed robbery. For nearly 40 years, the AARS taskforce, combined with the Ghana Armed Forces, has intensified night patrols, swooped suspected robbery/criminal hideouts, and apprehended suspects, sometimes killing some of the ‘suspects’ in shootouts. Despite the AARS efforts, robbery, sometimes deadly, continues unabated. One may conclude that the robbers are rather emboldened in their activities.

Delays in police investigations and prosecution of suspects, coupled with constant government amnesty to convicted offenders, including convicted robbers, to decongest the prisons in Ghana, has resulted in a low level of trust in the criminal justice system by most Ghanaians. This mistrust has sometimes led to lynching of suspected criminals by the citizenry or the mob/crowd that arrested the suspect, unless there is a timely police intervention.

Conclusion 

The data presented show that most of the robberies from 2014 to 2017 were recorded in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions, the two most populous and economically developed regions in Ghana. Among the cities of Ghana, the data show that the Accra-Tema metroplex in the Greater Accra region, followed by Kumasi, in the Ashanti region recorded the highest robberies. Ghana’s bid to transform itself into a cashless society is laudable, but mobile money transfer operations that are conducted in vulnerable and ‘isolated’ spots without capable guardians have rather become vulnerable.