Government Properties
The Nigeria Police Force as Total Institution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2103107 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Olly Owens, Olly Owen (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 37-58 |
| Publication date | 2016-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0001972015000790 |
| OpenAlex | W2324161491 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 13 |
This article looks at the relationships between Nigerian police officers and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) in which they serve. Against simplistic portraits of police institutions as mechanistic agents of governmental power, the article looks inside one such institution to examine how it exercises power over its own personnel, in a totalizing institutional project which combines duty and identity within a hierarchical and paramilitarized structure. Police officers are caught between their embodying of state authority and their lack of authority within their own institution. At the same time, it depicts individual officers' attempts to navigate this structure to their own advantage, creating a counter-current within the institutional world. Both ultimately affect the way in which the NPF exercises its powers within wider society. According to this perspective, the violence and corruption, negligence and evasion that often typify interactions with the police may be less signs of police officers' power than of their attempts to cope with the lack of it
Abuse of power · Criminology · Duty · Government (linguistics · Identity (music · Institution · Language change · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public relations · Sociology · State (computer science · Total institution · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Public Administration
Police Unlimited
The dual Sides of the Police Badge
Rationalising the appeal of the Boko Haram sect in Northern Nigeria before July 2009
Reframing the 'Reasonable Officer' and Victim/Suspect in the Trial of Philip Brailsford
(In)security in subordination
Police predation and violence in urban Nigeria
Police officers at work, but for whom? Ethnographies of police in Africa
Urban borderwork
Eyes, Ears, and Wheels
The Checkpoint State
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2026 (10) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |