Where the wild things are not: crime preventers and the 2016 Ugandan elections

Policing men: militarised masculinity, youth livelihoods, and security in conflict‐affected northern Uganda

“…The findings support the view that, in northern Uganda, informal security operations and civilian militias should be analysed as an economic and socio‐cultural strategy to control young male populations, rather than primarily as an instrument of violence to marginalise political rivals (Tapscott, ). Indeed, young Acholi males working in the informal security sector are striving to provide for their families in a context of a militarised state and society that is closely connected to the ruling regime's power.…”

Police, Policing, and the Community: Community Policing in Theory and Practice in Gulu, Uganda

“…Even though 'fragmented and overlapping patterns of policing' exist in Uganda, the state maintains degrees of influence and control over alternative security provision, from the vil-lage level and upwards [30]. There is also evidence that the state in Uganda makes conscious decisions about intervening or allowing illegal attempts to provide security such as mob justice and vigilante actions taken by citizens or local political leadership to address criminality [30,34,41,42]. Some authors note that the Ugandan state maintains control over various forms of alternative security provision and acts ambiguously towards those, sometimes supporting them, at other times penalising them as it serves state interests or objectives [30,34].…”

“…The recent manifestation of the crime preventers scheme was introduced by President Museveni as a community policing initiative in 2014 [34,41,[80][81][82], but the most significant round of recruitment of crime preventers occurred before the 2016 general elections in Uganda ( [80], p. 9). While flagged as a community policing initiative by the President, it became evident that crime preventers were recruited by the NRM to serve as a tool of power to secure the elections ( [41], p. 699). As such, crime preventers assumed a partisan role and were seen and understood by the public at large as NRM agents ([80], p. 9)([41], p. 700).…”

Naked Bodies and Collective Action: Repertoires of Protest in Uganda’s Militarised, Authoritarian Regime

“…Much of the state's neopatrimonial system of resource distribution occurs through security organs. For example, before the 2016 elections, the regime recruited tens of thousands of 'Crime Preventers'nominally community police organised to 'help with the elections'who were promised and received benefits via the police and Ministry of Internal Affairs such as bicycles, motorcycles, low-interest loans, and short-term employment (Tapscott 2016, Kagoro 2019. The regime also recently placed its agricultural extension programme and its national ID project under the auspices of the military, and has appointed military officers throughout many of the country's ministries and agencies, including to the State House Anti-Corruption Unit; the Department of Citizenship and Immigration; and as liaisons to the Uganda National Roads Authority and the Uganda Revenue Authority (Kafeero 2019).…”

“…The state is doubly at a loss here. First, it undermines the Ugandan state's assumed political and economic registers (Scott 1976, Tapscott 2016). Second, it restricts the state's ability to deploy violence, since embedded in the very masculinity of the militarised state is the widely shared belief that it is not palatable to use violence against vulnerable female (maternal) bodies (Zunes 1994, Chenoweth andCunningham 2013, Boyd forthcoming).…”