WEEK 4(b): Lake 2022, Policing Insecurity

Main ideas, key details, evidence, etc

Main Ideas

Lake CHALLENGES the idea that strengthening police forces in post-conflict wars brings peace. INSTEAD, she argues that such capacity-building efforts heighten local insecurity and entrench a wartime political order.

She demonstrates how advanced state power provides predatory actors with efficient infrastructures for local repression and extortion rather than fostering accountability.

How do police officers impact everyday life for civilians?

Police officers are “the face of the state” for most civilians

They are key instruments in shaping confidence and relationships with state institutions

Predatory policing goes hand in hand with…

Revenue generation and local economies

Interactions are gendered, classed, and raced, which deepens experiences of poverty, social exclusion and criminalization for minorities

How does legitimate police work produce fear for civilians?

Work presumed to promote stability can instead entrench a political order where trust in the state remains low and incentives for political actors to pursue their own political agendas through violence remains high.

Conventional Wisdom on Security Sector Reform (SSR)

Assumes that building state coercive capacity and establishing a state monopoly on violence reduces cyclical conflict and fosters predictable, rule-governed behavior.

What was the specific case study here?

Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), focusing on multiyear ethnographic and interview-based work with civilians, police officers, and security agents.

Logic of Victimization (Police self-perception)

Police view themselves as neglected, unpaid, and vulnerable victims of state precarity and higher-level corruption, allowing them to justify predatory behavior against civilians as necessary for survival

Role of International Peacebuilding Missions (MONUSCO)

International efforts heavily funded police training and capacity building to restore state authority, but failed to account for how officers deployed new capacities locally.

Impacts of Police Predation on Civilian perceptions of the state

Civilian fear and traumatization by uniformed officers severely erode trust in state institutions

This drove individuals to seek protection from non-state armed groups

Unintended consequences of State Building in post-conflict transitions

Expanding state presence without institutional accountability transfers coercive power into the hands of predatory local actors deepening human insecurity