Watkins, Jessica, al-Jerba, Abdulkareem and al-Delaimi, Mahdi (2022) Locating the local police in Iraq’s security arena: community policing, the ‘three Ps’ and trust in Ninawa province. Third World Quarterly. ISSN 0143-6597
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Abstract
Post-2003, the Iraqi Police Service (IPS) has undergone a series of overhauls that have prioritised building institutional capacities (‘statebuilding’) above socio-political cohesion (‘nation-building’). Following the defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), however, a community policing initiative premised on improving state–society relations has gained momentum. But while community policing is conceived in the Global North as a trust-building mechanism, how do Iraqi stakeholders locally perceive it, when the legacy of regime change has been to entrench a highly militarised police force beholden to patronage networks and heavily outnumbered by other security and justice providers? This paper considers policing in two diverse districts in Ninawa province: a rundown Sunni tribal neighbourhood in Mosul, and a predominantly Christian town in a multi-ethnic district. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 37 figures representing a spectrum of local interests, we explore how Iraqis understand three commonly touted characteristics of community policing: police–public partnerships; problem-solving; and preventing crime. Our findings suggest that while police conduct does impact how stakeholders view them, public trust in the police is at least as much a function of who the police are as of what they actually do, underscoring that police professionalism cannot substitute for political legitimacy more broadly.
Item Type: | Article |
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Official URL: | https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/ctwq20 |
Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors |
Divisions: | International Relations |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology |
Date Deposited: | 04 Oct 2022 07:21 |
Last Modified: | 10 Aug 2024 05:15 |
URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/116890 |
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