What has been the impact of community policing in Mozambique? What do local versions of community policing mean for everyday policing practices and police-citizen relations? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the implementation of state-initiated community policing in a rural former war-zone. It recommends that community policing in post-war contexts be viewed with caution. Historically embedded cultures of policing and state-citizen relations are very influential, and police officers can easily lose control over community police.
There have been several past attempts to reform the national police of Mozambique in accordance with the rule of law and human rights. Failures to democratise the police during the 1990s led to the introduction of community policing (policiamento comunitário – PolCom) from 2000. This, it was promised, could foster a new culture of police-community partnerships, citizen inclusion and accountable state policing.
Community policing has been principally used by the local police to expand state police outreach and reassert sovereign authority by outsourcing extra-legal tasks to young men. Crime has been reduced in statistical terms, but at the cost of symbolic and physical police violence which echoes elements of past paramilitary policing cultures. Further:
- Effects on crime seem to depend on how criminality is defined and how its perpetrators and victims are labelled.
- The PolCom experience demonstrates the ease with which the state police’s sovereign authority to define the ‘legitimate’ use of force can be relinquished to community police. The distinction between criminals and law-enforcers can also become unclear.
- Improved training of local police officers and improved public information on government intentions might have reduced the scope for creativity in translating policy into practice.
- The probability of adherence to policy intentions was further reduced by a lack of existing legislation, independent bodies and sufficient resources to regulate and monitor the conduct of PolCom members.
Community policing should not be assumed to offer an effective means of tackling paramilitary policing cultures, violent crime and societal disorder in post-conflict societies. Other key lessons are that:
- There is a need to pay attention to the central role played by the local state police in perpetuating, or even (re)expanding police violence and restrictions on citizenship.
- Implementation of community policing policies is shaped by individual initiatives and local political and socio-economic conditions.
- To realise constitutional commitments to human rights and publicly accountable state officials, it is necessary to address historically embedded cultures of policing and state-citizen relations.
