ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, rather than establishing a consolidated state system, police reform as part of broader state-building efforts reproduced the hybrid political order that paramount and lesser chiefs embody and control. To substantiate the practical dimensions of this argument, the chapter explores one aspect of police reform in Sierra Leone: how and with what implications community policing has been introduced at the local level during police reform from the early 2000s onward. The focus is on the primary institutional expression of community policing, the Local Policing Partnership Boards that were introduced with little written guidance, albeit based on experience in the UK. The chapter discusses the history of community policing in Sierra Leone and the traces of transformation in local power structures that it has engendered. It demonstrates that a primary driver behind the engagement is personalized, that is, extremely localized interests.
