Paper short abstract:

This paper approaches public authority in Rwanda from below, mapping the actors involved in the prevention of street crime. It addresses the duties of different actors and their points of contact in the broader policing system. Empirical materials are illustrated through selected criminal incidents.

Paper long abstract:

This paper approaches public authority in Rwanda from below, mapping the actors involved in the prevention of street crime. It progresses through a series of subsections - on house guards, community policing committee members, police community liaison officers, judicial police officers, district security officers, private security guards, RDF military patrols and abanyerondo night patrolmen - looking both at the individual duties associated with these positions and their points of contact in the broader policing system. Each subsection amalgamates information from a range of interviews and informal discussions that are drawn from twenty months of fieldwork between 2013 and 2015.

Empirical material on the various roles in the Rwandan policing network are illustrated through the thick description of four selected criminal incidents that occurred in 2014 and 2015. These descriptions demonstrate the importance of Rwandan policing systems below the cell tier of government administration. They show the diversity of actors working at this level and the range of channels available for information to pass to state authorities. Providing this degree of detail on Rwanda's policing groups, their work and their interactions has not been done before in a systematic manner. It allows not only for the identification of central themes in Rwandan policing, but also for the comparison of nuanced mechanisms of local crime prevention between different urban centres in the country.