ABSTRACT
This introduction provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a contemporary overview of the police in Guyana. It examines the laws governing the police and its organizational structure, policies of recruitment, promotion, discipline, dismissals, etc. The book addresses politics, corruption, and the police. The relationship of the police to the indigenous rulers and the peculiar nature of the emergent system of indigenous rule will be made manifest. The book examines the sensitive issue of police corruption and related to corruption among state elites and in the wider societal context. It discusses the relationship of the police to several other military institutions in Guyanese society. Trends of growing militarization in the society are depicted as are the strategies put forth by the state elites in Third World context in an attempt to maintain civil control of the defense forces amid an era of coups and countercoups in the developing world.
