Introduction

Discussing the development of law and order in a global context, Comaroff and Comaroff (2012) have argued that our understanding of the nature and development of policing would be better informed by more fully incorporating perspectives on the operation of policing systems in the ‘global South’. They make this argument in marked contrast to what they refer to as a central assumption of Euromodernity that invariably sees the ‘global South’ as forever tracking behind the North, ‘behind the curve of universal history, always in deficit, playing catch up’ (2012: 12; Connell, 2007). Instead, they argue, ‘there is good reason to think the opposite’, for ‘[g] iven the unpredictable … dialectic of capitalism and modernity in the here and now, it is the south in which radically new assemblages of capital and labour are taking shape [prefiguring] the future of the global North’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2012: 12). And of course, where capitalism, governance and refashioned social orders lead, policing systems are likely to be thoroughly implicated, a sharp reminder, discussed later in this chapter, that ‘Southern’ and colonial (weaponized, unaccountable, asymmetric) policing and security systems, far from being reformed are, in fact, lying in wait. As Bell (2013) has also argued, it is important not to see policing policy transfers as ‘uni-directional’: for often, supposedly ‘exceptional’ police practices more usually deployed in the colonies and typically ‘seen as having been particularly marked by paramilitarism’ and intensive surveillance (especially ‘widespread during the period of decolonisation as local forces sought to deal with political insurgency’ and ‘suspect populations’) have also come to be increasingly normalized within Britain itself (Bell, 2013; see also Nigam, 1990a, 1990b; Elkins, 2005; Fekete, 2013; Silvestri, 2019; Elliott-Cooper, 2021 for imperial examples). Cole also notes that one of the difficulties in assessing colonial policing resides ‘in the lack of a clear distinction between policing and military action’ and in any event, ‘most of the colonial senior police officers in Africa and Latin America were recruited directly from the imperial armies … and the majority of the police forces … were paramilitary units’ (Cole, 1999: 89).

These questions, the blurred distinctions between policing and quasimilitary force and the legacies they represent, form a central concern of the chapter.