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This is a book about the men and women who police contemporary South Africa. Drawing on rich, original ethnographical data, it considers how officers make sense of their jobs and how they find meaning in their duties. It demonstrates that the dynamics that lead to police abuses and scandals in transitional and neo-liberalising regimes such as South Africa can be traced to the day-to-day experiences and ambitions of the average police officer. It is about the stories they tell themselves about themselves and their social worlds, and how these shape the order they produce through their work. By focusing on police officers, this book positions the individual in primacy over the organisation, as...
Every South African has a strong opinion on crime and policing, but most know very little about the lives and experiences of the average cop in the 185 000-strong South African Police Service. This book is composed of excerpts from interviews with current and former members of the service who, for the first time, share their personal experiences of life behind the badge. The book covers a wide range of themes, including reasons for signing up, training, policing under apartheid and transformation after 1994. It describes the experience of solving cases, using lethal force, being shot at and losing colleagues. Policemen and -women speak frankly about the psychological toll of police work and the impact on their family lives, and give startling insights into ethics, torture, corruption, sex and power. There is a mantra among police: ‘What happens on the shift stays on the shift.’ In Behind the Badge, members break through this wall of silence and reveal the hidden life of the police.
This book sheds light on Africa’s development performance and dynamics arising from the interface between corruption and sustainable development on the one hand and the challenges that poses for peace, security and stability. Corruption also contributes to the spread of terrorism and violent extremism. Pervasive corruption networks often include politicians, civil servants working at all levels of state institutions, representatives of the private sector and members of crime syndicates. The consequences of corruption are detrimental in many aspects, such as undermining governments’ ability to serve public interests and eroding public trust in democratic processes. Presenting empirical ev...
This book offers a first-hand insight into the work of policing scholars and the research that they undertake. Bringing together a range of leading scholars and drawing on a range of pressing topics, it introduces the diverse nature of policing research, and the ethical and practical challenges faced by policing researchers. Each chapter brings clarity to the concept of empirical research within policing, introduces readers to the theoretical explanations and assumptions that underpin the rational of research design in policing, as well as considering the limitations of research. Topics include: • research methods in police research; • police professionalisation; • police and diversity...
Policing in the 21st century is becoming increasingly complicated as economic, political, social, and legal circumstances continue to compel police organizations to evolve. To illustrate the complexity of policing in the 21st century and cover themes common to police organizations around the world, Exploring Contemporary Police Challenges: A Global Perspective is organized into six sections, which cover the key policing challenges across the globe. Based on US President Barack Obama’s 2015 Task Force’s organization into six broad pillars, this volume contains contributions from policing experts focusing on Building Trust and Legitimacy; Providing Policy and Oversight; Utilizing Technology and Social Media; Developing Community Policing and Crime Reduction; Providing Police Training and Education; and Facilitating Officer Wellness and Safety. Scholarly analyses and discussions of these issues in 16 countries on 6 continents offer a global perspective on policing in the 21st century. This volume simultaneously enhances the scope of policing scholarship and demonstrates that no country can sidestep the need to adjust to these rapid and profound changes.
State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the framework of security issues and African states. This work brings together criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa's police forces.
A compelling account of South Africa’s post-Apartheid democracy At a time when many democracies are under strain around the world, Until We Have Won Our Liberty shines new light on the signal achievements of one of the contemporary era’s most closely watched transitions away from minority rule. South Africa’s democratic development has been messy, fiercely contested, and sometimes violent. But as Evan Lieberman argues, it has also offered a voice to the voiceless, unprecedented levels of government accountability, and tangible improvements in quality of life. Lieberman opens with a first-hand account of the hard-fought 2019 national election, and how it played out in Mogale City, a pos...
This new book by the well-known anthropologists Jean and John L. Comaroff explores the global preoccupation with criminality in the early twenty-first century, a preoccupation strikingly disproportionate, in most places and for most people, to the risks posed by lawlessness to the conduct of everyday life. Ours in an epoch in which law-making, law-breaking, and law-enforcement are ever more critical registers in which societies construct, contest, and confront truths about themselves, an epoch in which criminology, broadly defined, has displaced sociology as the privileged means by which the social world knows itself. They also argue that as the result of a tectonic shift in the triangulatio...
‘A must-read, accessible and skilful account of South Africa’s socio-economic challenges, policy and governance choices.’ - THEMBA MASEKO All the numbers on South Africa’s crisis dashboard are blinking red. The economy is failing to grow and more and more young people find themselves on the outside looking in as education falters and jobs disappear. Energy and transport are in crisis. Governance is floundering as debt mounts and government runs out of money. Better Choices is a collection by South Africa’s top thinkers on the political economy, providing an unflinching account of the myriad challenges the country faces. The picture that emerges is of a nation on the brink of a cata...
Breeding Ground of corruption is a challenging text in which many case examples of police corruption is paired with contemporary research. Garrisons firsthand knowledge of how police corruption disintegrates careers, she incorporates numerous statistics to provide a foundation for a police corruption theory. The theory PTSD and Depression are the leading denominators in police corruption. This book is a poignant look into the mental health issues and real-time corruption cases that follow officers across the United Sates.