The Police Precinct

Abstract

This chapter provides an ethnographic account of the inner workings of a police precinct in Bandung during the New Order. Based on fieldnotes, police reports, news accounts, and other sources, the chapter argues that precinct-level policing was dominated by fraternities: neopatrimonial networks of “brothers” who shared an institutional history and collaborated in an illicit economy. Fraternities shaped how surveillance, law enforcement, and efforts to maintain territorial security were carried out at the front line of police work, bridging the gap between central state power and informal territorial sovereignties. In doing so, however, fraternities also contributed to public perceptions of police “corruption,” which had the effect of undermining the legitimacy of New Order state power.