Behind Closed Gates

Everyday Policing in Durban, South Africa

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2103124
AutoresSarah-Jane Cooper-Knock (autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen86
Número1
Páginas98-121
Fecha de publicación2016-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972015000972
OpenAlexW2329610405
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14
Referencias citadas59

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 atomized 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, utilized, 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, are distrustful of their employees who supposedly protect them, and appear far more willing to take matters into their own hands than many interviewees admit or imagine

Allegiance · Argument (complex analysis · Bureaucracy · Community policing · Criminology · Everyday life · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Pretext · Private sector · Private security · Residence · Sociology · State (computer science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Public Administration · Sex work and related issues