The book discusses police practices in Uganda, which are understood as fluid and reflective of the socio-political, cognitive and discursive contexts within which the Uganda Police Force (UPF) exist. The author was immersed in the UPF both as an ethnographer and a consultant. The book demonstrates how police officers navigate clashes between personal interests and those of the UPF shedding more light on the divergences and convergences between policies in theory and policies in practice. It contributes to the literature on police research, especially to our understanding of policing and the anthropology of the state in Africa. It highlights that the Ugandan police engages in political policing and its role is stretched beyond its legal mandate. The target audience is twofold: first, academics interested in police studies and the undercurrents of interface bureaucracies in Africa. Second, practitioners focused on improving state and police services in African contexts.

This book uncovers a myriad of competing perceptions and different feelings about (in)security in Uganda's capital; Kampala city. The aforementioned are described as the urban (in)security paradox. The paradoxes range from whether the state's security forces are a source of security or insecurity, whether Kampala is secure or insecurity to the inseparable nature of state politics and security. The book locates the urban (in)security paradox in Uganda at the intersection of the global trends of urban security challenges, Uganda's socio-political history and the existing shared perception that the security forces are the most important political power base. The book discusses forms of crime/insecurity especially terrorism and armed robbery and shows how the state has thus-far reacted in the attempt to combat these crimes.Furthermore the book highlights on the perspectives of (in)security illustrating how the levels of feeling (in)secure differ among different social groups. four different social clusters of; socio-economic class, gender, security officers and politicians are discussed in fair details.