PKSOI Lessons Learned Report January 2019 | Page 11
Local Insights for Police Reform
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(Lesson #2701)
Observation:
A 5-year police reform program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) highlights
the importance of understanding local context, designing reform programs with affordability
and sustainability in mind, and including the inputs of local police and community members.
Discussion.
…Changing the police’s everyday behavior ultimately requires improving living and
working conditions of ordinary police personnel. Listening to their lived experiences and
perspectives, thereby deepening the understanding of the political economy of street-
level policing, can yield important insights in how to improve reform impact and sustain-
ability, and should be at the heart of future police reform programs. (Thill et al, p. 9)
From 2010 until its end in early 2015, the Security Sector Accountability and Police Reform
(SSAPR) program achieved a handful of positive results. Specific successes were: (1) a
series of laws and decrees governing the police were passed; (2) over 1,500 police officers
were trained in police-community partnerships and accountability principles; and, (3) police-
community meeting platforms were established to bring police, administrators, and civil
society members together on a periodic basis. However, various other initiatives did not
endure once this donor-driven program ended.
Several reasons account for why this police reform program fell short overall – without
sustainability:
1) Patronage structures were prevalent in this context – whereby most police officers
were loyal to certain superiors/powerholders; these police officers routinely took or
accepted money from local citizens in order to provide regular/weekly payments to
superiors/powerholders; and, these police officers thereby also had job security.
2) Police training courses (within the police reform program) were seen by many
participants primarily as a means to get meals/money/uniforms for a 6-month
period – without having to commit to serving in the police force for their communi-
ties. After the training period, some participants simply returned to their homes,
some pawned their equipment, and only small numbers of recruits actually went
on to serve their communities.
3) Many police commanders did not see any personal benefits from the reform
program. They perceived the small number of newly trained and reform-minded
recruits as threats to their interests. Consequently, they assigned just marginal
work to those personnel and overlooked them for promotions.
4) The rather short timeframe (five years) of the program was insufficient to change
the long-standing attitudes and operational practices of the police institution. Upon
program termination and absence of donor involvement/resourcing, many of the
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