Repairing the law: The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie

Abstract

Sometimes it just seems wrong (or too much work) to enforce the law à la lettre. Then police officers may either turn a blind eye to particular situations or give you a warning instead of a ticket. The gendarmes in Niger do that as well, and they call this in Hausa 'gyara', meaning 'repair'. Taking seriously the gendarmes' perspective, their search for justice, as well as this notion of repair, I propose a little anthropological twist: it is not the gendarmes' application of the law that is deficient, but the law itself is. In their search for justice, the gendarmes in Niger repaired a law that they deemed inappropriate for policing the life worlds of the people they were confronted with.

Urban borderwork: Ethnographies of policing

“…The ethnographic focus on how non-state policing actors relate to, engage with, and act on behalf of or in the absence of state-sanctioned policing actors has occurred at the expense of understanding how the police themselves perceive of, perform and navigate what it means to police. In recent years, this has resulted in a significant body of ethnographically driven studies focusing on the police and policing (Beek, 2016; Beek et al., 2017; Fassin, 2013, 2017; Garriott, 2013; Göpfert, 2013, 2016; Hornberger, 2010, 2011; Jauregui, 2016; Karpiak, 2016; Martin, 2013, 2016; Mutsaers, 2014, 2018; Owen, 2013, 2016; Steinberger, 2008). Many of these works emerged from a growing interest in ‘the state’, as an idea and as a set of practices, but also as Cooper-Knock and Owen (2015: 356) emphasize, because of a relative analytical neglect of ‘state actors and statehood’ in the context of policing, and consequently ‘everyday realities and modes of state policing’ (see also Mutsaers et al., 2015: 786).…”

Community Policing and the Engagement of Pastoral Terrorism in West Africa

“…Such police roles groomed public suspicions that police activities tended toward factors that are detrimental to the public well-being (Grinc, 1994; Sadd & Grinc, 1994). Due to a lack of public response, the imprint of community policing is often unfelt in so many communities in West Africa, compared with proactive policing, which feeds off its positive engagement with the public (Beek & Göpfert, 2013; Göpfert, 2016; Oliver, 2004). Because its main strengths lie in its ability to earn public trust and to convince the people that its roles are legitimate, traditional policing exists without much attention to community engagement.…”

No longer merely “good to think”: The new anthropology of police as a mode of critical thought

“…Starting from a similarly grounded perspective, Mirco Göpfert’s article (20(4) 446–461) offers a rejoinder to legal formalists who argue that justice emits from the application of the law. Building up from his experiences with gendarme in Niger who often not only regularly commit what such legal scholars would call “corruption”—in that their actions and decisions are frequently entirely extra-legal—but defend their actions in terms of social justice, Göpfert argues that their police work should be understood as instances of “repairing the law”.…”