The South African Police Service (SAPS) has adopted ‘community policing’ as its basic philosophy for dealing with crime in communities. Community policing aims to bring the police and community together to solve problems of crime. The definition of community policing is: ‘a philosophy that guides police management styles and operational strategies, and emphasises the establishment of police- community partnerships and a problem-solving approach in response to the needs of the community’. By working together the SAPS hopes to make communities safer places to live in. This forms part of the National Crime Prevention Strategy, which has meant a shift from crime control to crime prevention. It also emphasises crime as a social problem rather than a security issue. The National Crime Prevention Strategy provides for a number of preventative programmes and underlying these is the basic policy of community policing.

Community policing requires the SAPS to focus on giving a good service, working in a partnership with the community through the Community Police Forums and being accountable to the community.