Repairing the law : The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie

Göpfert, Mirco

Repairing the law : The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie

Files

Goepfert_0-373323.pdf(380.61 KB)

Date

2016

Publication type

Journal article

Publication status

Published

Published in

Theoretical Criminology ; 20 (2016), 4. - pp. 446-461. - ISSN 1362-4806. - eISSN 1461-7439

Abstract

Sometimes it just seems wrong (or too much work) to enforce the law à la lettre. Then police officers may either turn a blind eye to particular situations or give you a warning instead of a ticket. The gendarmes in Niger do that as well, and they call this in Hausa ‘gyara’, meaning ‘repair’. Taking seriously the gendarmes’ perspective, their search for justice, as well as this notion of repair, I propose a little anthropological twist: it is not the gendarmes’ application of the law that is deficient, but the law itself is. In their search for justice, the gendarmes in Niger repaired a law that they deemed inappropriate for policing the life worlds of the people they were confronted with.

Subject (DDC)

300 Social Sciences, Sociology

Keywords

dispute settlement, law enforcement, Niger, police and policing, repair

Cite This

ISO 690

GÖPFERT, Mirco, 2016. Repairing the law : The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie. In: Theoretical Criminology. 20(4), pp. 446-461. ISSN 1362-4806. eISSN 1461-7439. Available under: doi: 10.1177/1362480616659819

BibTex

@article{Gopfert2016Repai-36038,
  year={2016},
  doi={10.1177/1362480616659819},
  title={Repairing the law : The search for justice in the Nigerien gendarmerie},
  number={4},
  volume={20},
  issn={1362-4806},
  journal={Theoretical Criminology},
  pages={446--461},
  author={Göpfert, Mirco}
}

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Bibliography of Konstanz

Yes