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6 - The State and Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jonathan Spencer
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

If you are the victim of a crime, there is a proper sequence of events to follow. If, for example, you discover a thief has made off with the money you had hidden away in your house, you go to the police, give them 1,000 rupees and tell them who you think did it. The police will arrest this person, take them to the police station, and beat them up. At this point, friends and relatives of the arrested person will usually bring a further 1,000 rupees to the police, who will set the first suspect free, but come and arrest you, take you to the police station and beat you up. At this point, you need to find another 1,000 rupees. Few crimes are solved, and even fewer produce convictions before the courts, while even the emotional satisfaction of revenge is purely temporary. All that really happens is the police get richer. Or, in the fastidious phrasing of a senior British diplomat I once met in Colombo, the problem for the police in a country like Sri Lanka, is that they ‘lack forensic capacity’.

I thought of this story (first told to me in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s) in September 1997, when I attended a training course in human rights and gender awareness for senior police officers in Sri Lanka. I was interested in policing as an aspect of the ‘everyday state’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Anthropology, Politics, and the State
Democracy and Violence in South Asia
, pp. 118 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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  • The State and Violence
  • Jonathan Spencer, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Anthropology, Politics, and the State
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801853.006
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  • The State and Violence
  • Jonathan Spencer, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Anthropology, Politics, and the State
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801853.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The State and Violence
  • Jonathan Spencer, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Anthropology, Politics, and the State
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801853.006
Available formats
×