Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the practices of police patrols in Ghana in the tension between monetary interests, moral norms and impartial law enforcement. The social order the police reproduce emerges as a compromise between them, civilians and other policing institutions.

Paper long abstract:

When Ghanaian police officers patrol the streets at night, the radio is mostly silent. The patrol team has to find police work proactively, in contrast to criminal investigations. However, even the seemingly straight-forward activities of the patrol team involve multiple forms of policing. The act of patrolling has a symbolic dimension, demarcating the spaces they attempt to control. Police officers also decide in which situations on the street they intervene, thereby categorizing some incidents as police matters. Other incidents are ignored and competing policing actors can appropriate them. Lastly, the various manners in which they approach and resolve the incidents determine what specific social order they produce.

Many encounters of the patrol team lead to some kind of informal arrangement, in which money is handed over to them. This is why, depending on the area they patrol, police officers tend to target these illegal activities that promise the highest revenue: traffic offences, illegal woodcutting, sale of narcotics, etc. Yet despite their blatant monetary interests, most police officers carefully use their discretion to frame their interactions in terms of impartial law enforcement, serving the common good. The possible use of law as punishment guides all their practices. However, because of political pressure and the considerable influence of their civilian counterparts, they also align their practices to other moral orders. The social order they enforce ultimately emerges out of this constant tension between market logic, communal solidarity, and the law.