ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. This book focuses on policing, politics and order-making. It explores how urban spaces are policed when the public police are seen as inadequate and insecurity is a mainstay of daily life. The book presents policing actors are co-opted to further the political agenda and power position of other influential actors, including party politicians, public officials, traditional leaders and drug lords. It explores policing practices and actors as embedded not only in police networks, but also in specific social and political relations of the urban space. This book then focuses on the different contributions show how policing actors are equally preoccupied with efforts to concentrate power and consolidate particular power positions. It also focuses on densely populated spaces in the Global South where insecurity is a primary experience of everyday life and where ordinary citizens consider public policing and other state services to be inadequate.
