This unique book on policing in sub-Saharan Africa explores the plurality of state and non-state providers and authorisers of policing that in complex ways coexist, overlap and compete on the continent. Using a broad definition of policing – ‘any organised activity, whether by the state or civil groups, that seeks to ensure the maintenance of communal order, security and peace’ (p. 22) – Chapter 2 correctly argues that any attempt to understand how security is provided and governed must go beyond the state police and the formal, and involve empirical analyses of who citizens actually turn to for protection. Baker applies the concept of ‘multi-choice policing’ to argue that Africans ‘shop’ between different policing agencies, depending on the nature of problems they face and the types of redress available (e.g. local headmen, priests, the state police, community policing forums, commercial security guards, vigilantes, spontaneous mobs, etc.). Fundamentally, the argument goes, there is no single institution exercising a monopoly of regulation and enforcement of order. Various community and commercial groups, formal as well as informal, authorise policing, besides the state (e.g. economic interest groups, residential/cultural communities, individuals, traditional authorities, etc.). This situation is not unique to sub-Saharan Africa, but challenges to state police monopoly are more extreme than in Western Europe and the US.

Chapters 3 and 4 outline the social, political and historical conditions specific to shaping multi-choice policing in Africa. The most significant explanation is the condition of state fragility in Africa, including weak capacity, indeed unwillingness at times, to provide security and justice to the majority of the population, as well as contested legitimacy brought about by corruption, predatory rulers and police violence. This is partly shaped by continuities of colonial paramilitary ‘regime policing’, with state policing being primarily concerned with political control and protection of the economic interests of rulers, rather than with crime control and civilian protection. Despite attempts by many post-colonial governments to establish a monopoly of state policing, colonial forms of indirect rule also continue in informal ways. Other contemporary factors explaining the plurality of policing include poverty, social inequalities, widespread armed conflicts, and crime associated with youth marginalisation and political transitions.

Chapter 5 provides a generalised overview and typology of the many different policing groups that exist in contemporary Africa. It describes modes of organisation, forms of punishment, range of operations, basis of legitimacy, and so forth. In particular, Baker focuses on how different policing groups relate to the law and the state. The core of his argument is that state police failure has reinvigorated self-policing, but that this has not created a simple dichotomy between state and non-state policing. Often there is ‘considerable interpenetration and overlap between the two’, both formally and informally (p. 77). Unfortunately, the chapter does not provide an in-depth analysis of the underlying politics of this complexity, including issues around competition for power and the deeper meanings of the central role of violence, youth and identity that crop up in the descriptions of policing groups. The same applies to Chapters 6 and 7, where Baker addresses policing in Uganda and Sierra Leone. While he makes the important point that different national histories and government policies on the role of non-state actors shape the particular characteristics of multi-choice policing in each context, the case presentations remain primarily descriptive.

Chapter 8 goes deeper into the structural determinants (the state, internal conflicts, development programmes and commercial opportunities) of different patterns of policing, and the unpredictable role of agency (i.e. different providers and authorisers of policing). Chapter 9 discusses the social implications of multi-choice policing. It argues that this provides a broad social safety net and can deepen local democracy, but because alternative policing is seldom nationally regulated, it can also accentuate unequal access to security and justice, intolerance of outsiders, violence, illegality and unaccountability. The chapter concludes by discussing available policy options. It supports a national strategy on multi-choice policing that promotes state/non-state alliances and publicly accountable policing agencies.

This book correctly argues that policing in Africa is a mode of governance, shaped by politics and economic interests, rather than simply a technical activity confined to the realm of criminology. The reader is left with an interesting paradox: failures of state policing, and weak state sovereignty more generally, condition the reinvigoration of alternative policing, but the success of the latter depends on favourable state responses. What does this imply for conceptions of state sovereignty and the apparent links between politics and policing? More broadly, what does it tell us about the influence of different conceptions of social order and justice (which may conflict with state-legal notions)? These structural factors could have been addressed more robustly in the book, and in its two case studies. This would require moving from the larger picture of the sub-continent to more detailed ethnographic studies of everyday policing practices and vernacular conceptions of order, security and justice. Overall, this is an important piece of work. Its overview of African policing patterns will most certainly inspire future empirical studies, theoretical discussions and policy debates on policing in different corners of Africa.