A criminologist with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Dr Jones Opoku-Ware, has said that people’s exposure to strain and stressors factors are the major cause of the armed robbery trends in the country.

Speaking in an interview on Midday News on Wednesday, the criminologist explained that these strains and stressors resolve from several factors, including social, marital and relationship problems.

“When people are exposed to a lot of strain and stressors, it creates a lot of frustration, and there is always what we call a relationship between frustration and our aggression.

"So people begin to act out those things and then this aggression and the frustration and that’s what we are seeing in those criminal activities in the Ashanti Region,” he told Host Emefa Apawu.

His comments come after suspected armed robbers gunned down a watchman guarding the office of A2 Enterprise, an aluminium products dealership venture at Santase-Kokoben in Kumasi.

The victim, Bosompem Andoh, 49, was found dead, with stab wounds and his body dragged inside the shop.

Mr Opoku-Ware, touching on how these strains and stressors could be solved to reduce the level of criminal activities in the country, said it will take a lot of time.

According to him, people’s dire need for cash in the country is also contributing to the recent rise in armed robbery patterns.

“Cash is the basic crime attractor and crime generator, so once people go through this kind of stress and strains, and they need money, they have to find ways and means to get the money. So you are most likely to find people committing robberies.

“That is why you see the patterns as we’ve observed in recent times, they are targeting specific businesses and specific people and most of them, you can see that the object of attraction is cash.

“It tells you that people are only responding to the kind of frustration and stress and strains they are having within the society.”