Guarding the extending frontier

This chapter discusses the development of a formal system of policing in the Gold Coast, the concluding date of 1913 marking the consolidation of British control over the territory that approximates to modern Ghana. It looks at the way in which a dual system of policing developed. The dual system includes an armed frontier force to secure the extending territory of the Gold Coast and a smaller unarmed civil police force to extend social control over the coastal towns and villages. The origin of the police as an armed constabulary, the system of direction and control, and the continuing political instability of the Gold Coast, ensured that policing relied primarily on a paramilitary force. Official rhetoric often proclaimed evolution to a system of civil policing by consent; popular hostility to the police and political realities dictated that policing remained predominantly a paramilitary activity throughout the whole of the colonial period

Archaeology · Business · Colonialism · Criminology · Frontier · Geography · Gold coast · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Law