ANTI-FRAUD TRAINING IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE SERVICE (SAPS): A STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE

Since after the democratic dispensation in 1994, South Africa became a global community that directly or indirectly, attracted transnational organised crime networks as an emerging democratic country. As a result, legislative mandates and public expectations have heightened the necessity to hither define the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) officials, especially the investigation officials’ responsibility for detecting fraud during the performance of their duties. A mixed method approach was utilised in this study, in which one of the strategic component in the SAPS, namely anti-fraud training, was tested by, inter alia, determining the relevancy, adequacy and appropriateness of the detective curriculum in comparison with their day-to-day performance. An open-ended section allowing for general comments, was also included in the questionnaire in case respondents wish to highlight a particular point not addressed in the questionnaire. The stratified random sampling technique was used from the population of 20 0005 general detectives deployed across 1116 stations in the nine provinces of South Africa. A representative sample of 1920 general detectives and Detective Commanders across the rank structure was drawn from a staff compilation list obtained from the SAPS Division Personnel Services. From each selected station, an attempt was made to ensure that at least ten per cent of the population participated in this study. The sample realization was 1198 (62.4%) of the respondents who returned the questionnaire. The findings indicated that the detectives were not properly trained and not all the detectives attended the DLP. The findings also revealed that to some detectives, training is not possible due to huge workload at the local police stations and to those who managed to attend the training, could not be provided with refresher training in the area(s) such as corruption and fraud related investigation, statement taking and report writing, to enhance their detective skills