Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: Improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa

Cooper-Knock, Sarah Jane; Owen, Olly

doi:10.1177/1362480614557306

Cited by 35 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…That is when it feels like you are engaging with the state.’ 13 Ultimately, for Geoff, the police had failed to behave in a state-like fashion because they were administratively incompetent. He might have avoided the police entirely at this point had he not needed their case number for his insurance claims, to validate his claims to victimization (Cooper-Knock and Owen 2015).…”

Section: ‘I Went Through the Motions’: Procedural Engagement With Thementioning

confidence: 99%

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Behind Closed Gates: Everyday Policing in Durban, South Africa

Cooper-Knock¹

2016

Africa

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Studies of everyday policing in predominantly white areas in South Africa often focus on the spectacle of secured architecture and private policing services, concluding that the growth of the private security industry has created atomised units of residence that are alienated from the state. Such conclusions are important but incomplete: they do not look sufficiently behind closed gates to explore how private security is justified, utilised, supplemented, or avoided in daily life. In this article, I explore the everyday policing of theft and robbery in a predominantly white policing sector in Durban. I demonstrate that people have not simply transferred their dependence or allegiance from public to private policing. Instead, their approach to everyday policing straddles these two spheres, perpetually disrupts any simple dichotomy between them, and illustrates how all forms of policing are entangled in the wider inequalities and insecurities of post-apartheid South Africa. In making this argument, I highlight how residents remain reliant on the bureaucratic authority of the state police, distrustful of their employees who supposedly protect them, and appear far more willing to take matters into their own hands than many residents admit or imagine.

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Section: ‘I Went Through the Motions’: Procedural Engagement With Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“… 12 This was still better than the conviction rates in Johannesburg, which stood at 1.93 per cent. Of course, we need to be wary of any uncritical reading of crime statistics such as these (see Cooper-Knock and Owen 2015). …”

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confidence: 99%

Behind Closed Gates: Everyday Policing in Durban, South Africa

Cooper-Knock¹

2016

Africa

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“…Police also summarily execute suspects and commit extra-judicial killings (Alemika and Chukwuma 2000;Okeshola 2013). Owen and Cooper-Knock have referred to this phenomenon as 'police vigilantism' (Owen and Cooper-Knock 2014). This explanation is specifically offered as a better way of understanding the phenomenon of extra-judicial corporal and capital punishment by the police.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework: Thementioning

confidence: 99%

Policing Actors, Plural Processes and Hybridisation: Histories of Everyday Policing Practice in Central Nigeria

Lar

2018

Stability: International Journal of Security and Development

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“…Residents suggested other ways in which the community police could be made symbolically more like their state counterparts, even whilst criticizing how TPF officers perform in practice. As Cooper‐Knock and Owen (: 369) observe of state policing in Nigeria and South Africa, the centrality of the state in popular understandings of legitimate security provision may persist despite the limitations of this ideal in practice, and thus ‘the idea of the Police proves pervasive even when its reality has been highly uneven and problematic’. Residents of sub‐wards A, B and C suggested that community police could take oaths of service like the police, should carry identification cards, and should be equipped with uniforms.…”

Section: User Perspectives On Community Policingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ulinzi Shirikishi: Popular Experiences of Hybrid Security Governance in Tanzania

Cross¹

2016

Development and Change

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In the context of increasing academic and policy-related attention to 'hybrid' forms of security provision, which combine state and 'non-state' institutions, in Africa and elsewhere, this paper explores the implementation of community-based or 'participatory' policing (ulinzi shirikishi) in Tanzania. Through ulinzi shirikishi citizens are encouraged to form local security committees, organize neighbourhood patrols, and investigate reported crime. In contrast to earlier forms of state-sponsored sungusungu 'vigilantism' in Tanzania, community police are intended to cooperate with the Tanzania Police Force and to adhere to state law. Based on eleven month's fieldwork in three sub-wards of the city of Mwanza, this paper argues that community policing has been fairly effective in improving residents' perceptions of local safety. However, two important concerns emerge that may compromise the sustainability and legitimacy of community policing in the future. Firstly, organizing local policing entails considerable costs for 'communities', which disproportionately disadvantage the relatively poor. Secondly, controlling local service provision can enable individuals to pursue private gains, at the expense of the production of public goods. It is thus important to consider the development of hybridity over time towards models that may look less like community-based policing and more like commercial security provision. INTRODUCTIONThis paper explores an example of 'hybrid' security provision in urban Tanzania, involving the state police, local government, and 'communities'. In accordance with a community policing strategy introduced in 2006, citizens are encouraged to engage in ulinzi shirikishi (participatory or collaborative security) 1 through forming security committees, which organize night patrols, investigate reported crime and resolve disputes. This is not an 1 The term polisi jamii is also used to refer to community policing.2 entirely new approach in Tanzania, but draws on a well-documented history of local policing through sungusungu vigilantism. However, today's community policing diverges from its historical precursor in terms of the extent to which it is intended that police and organized citizens should cooperate in providing local security.This interpretation of community policing appears to represent a good fit with much current thinking regarding desirable forms of policing in Africa and elsewhere in the Global South.In many African contexts, governance might usefully be characterized as hybrid, whereby the state exists alongside a range of 'twilight institutions', which 'are not the state but However, recognition of the analytical utility of hybridity should not be conflated with assumptions about its practical usefulness as a policy template (Mallet 2010). Attempts to engage alternative institutions in security provision raise important empirical questions, regarding who benefits from hybrid arrangements, how any costs are distributed, both across communities and between communities and the stat...

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Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: Improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa

Cited by 35 publications

References 63 publications

Behind Closed Gates: Everyday Policing in Durban, South Africa

Behind Closed Gates: Everyday Policing in Durban, South Africa

Policing Actors, Plural Processes and Hybridisation: Histories of Everyday Policing Practice in Central Nigeria

Ulinzi Shirikishi: Popular Experiences of Hybrid Security Governance in Tanzania

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