Plural Policing in Papua New Guinea: More Than the Sum of Its Parts?

• Author: Sinclair Dinnen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862221096954
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862221096954

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2022, Vol. 38(3) 280 –294

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862221096954

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Article

Plural Policing in Papua

New Guinea: More Than

the Sum of Its Parts?

Sinclair Dinnen1

Abstract

Scholars increasingly acknowledge that policing involves multiple actors and diverse

institutional arrangements. Although the global expansion of private security has

prompted much of the current interest in plural policing in the Global North, relatively

little attention has been paid to this phenomenon in the Global South despite the

manifestly plural character of policing in many such countries. This article examines

plural policing in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the Southwest Pacific. Policing in PNG

involves a bewildering array of different actors and institutional forms, ranging from

transnational police to unofficial urban settlement committees. Investigating the

shifting pattern of pluralization in the context of broader structural changes and the

intersections between different providers illuminates how policing actually works in

this socially diverse nation, as well as highlighting some of its implications for state

and society in this understudied part of the world.

Keywords

policing and pluralization, global south, colonialism, security and order-making: Papua

New Guinea

Introduction

While policing and public police organizations continue to be equated in the popular

imagination, the reality in many parts of the world is of multiple actors and

institutional arrangements involved in what might be broadly conceived as policing

activities. Current interest in the pluralization of policing among scholars in the Global

1The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Sinclair Dinnen, Department of Pacific Affairs, The Australian National University, Coombs Building, 9

Fellows Road, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia.

Email: sinclair.dinnen@anu.edu.au

1096954CCJXXX10.1177/10439862221096954Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeDinnen

research-article2022