In 2005, the CCSSP was taken over by another program cycle with different priorities. Biddle had left Sierra Leone in 2003, and a Sierra Leonean, Brima Acha Kamara, had been appointed to the position of Inspector-General of Police (Albrecht and Jackson 2009:91- 92). The Justice Sector Development Program (JSDP) that replaced the CCSSP reflected a turn to what was referred to in international policy discourse as a more ‘holistic’ approach to SSR, and included attempts to encompass rather than marginalize hybrid organizational formations. It was a process, however, that continued to be cast in languages of stateness (JSDP December 2005).
Rather than targeting one organization within, such as the SLP, and addressing its effectiveness as an enforcing agency, the justice and security field and its governability was to be worked upon now as an inter-connected whole of organizational formations. The JSDP constituted a fundamental break with previous efforts, in the sense that chiefs, as well as bureaucratic oversight, for instance, were now factored into re-composition of the justice and security field. A ‘holistic’ approach meant that the primary focus now was on establishing an inter-linked state system, something that Horn and Biddle under the aegis of CCSSP had worked against by focusing exclusively on the SLP (Albrecht 2010:69). Until 2005, investments of approximately ₤27 million had been made in equipment, training and advisors with the sole purpose of establishing a police force of 9,500 officers that could manifest articulations of stateness across the territory of Sierra Leone and replace the perceived chaos and anarchy of war with one centrally-governed organization (White 2010:77). In this next phase, approximately ₤25 million were to be distributed among the actors considered to make up the justice and security field as a whole, which encompassed, inter alia, the judiciary, prisons and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Only
£3-4 million was to be spent on the police (Albrecht 2010:69+70). In practical terms, this turn of events had dramatic consequences for the position of the SLP in the course that programing took.
With the demise of the CCSSP and the onset of the JSDP, the SLP had lost Biddle as a clearly identifiable and decisive international leader. However, the SLP continued to be financially dependent on contributions from international donors. As one key advisor to the JSDP noted, this was somewhat of a double blow to the SLP: “Withdrawal of international funding inevitably leads to short-term paralysis and degradation of service with a real danger of attrition to the status quo ante” (Howlett-Bolton 2008:8).
7.2.2.1 Application of holistic principles to the justice and security field
Under the holistic approach to the justice and security sector, priority reform areas were expanded beyond any one organization in particular (Howlett-Bolton 2010:101). As expressed in Output to Purpose Review, a technical assessment produced by UK-based experts in 2007, areas to be reformed included out-of-date and inaccessible laws and procedures such as the indexing of customary law, prison overcrowding, delays in courts, absence of juvenile justice provision and the lack of support mechanisms to meet the “needs of the poor, vulnerable and marginalized to access justice and the lack of connection between community needs and police operations” (Bredemear et al. 2007:9- 10). The holistic commitment became a key component of the institutions governed by civilians that would manage and make order inside the borders of the country (see Albrecht and Jackson 2009:133).
The focus on the SLP as an institution was eclipsed by DFID’s emerging reluctance to support programming considered too oriented towards security and ‘the state’ rather than ‘the people’ and to be dominating issues relating to the broader justice sector, the judiciary in particular. JSDP thus marked DFID’s return to its perceived ‘core business’: bettering conditions for the poor (Bredemear et al. 2007:9-10). This shift was supported consistently
by the JSDP in both Freetown and Moyamba District, which became the only ‘pilot district’ of the JSDP outside the Western Area where Freetown is located.96
The JSDP placed a heavy emphasis on what can best be described as governance-related activities, i.e., the organization and inter-linking of state institutions. This was the practical recognition of the link between development, quality of governance and security (Call 2008:1493; Egnell and Haldén 2009:30). A Justice Sector Reform Strategy and Investment Plan for 2008-2010 (JSRS-IP), launched in February 2008, was regarded by the donor community in particular as an important contribution to Freetown-based reform efforts across the justice sector. A Justice Sector Co-ordination Office, established in July 2007 and located next to the Attorney General and Solicitor General’s offices within the Ministry of Justice, was considered pivotal to establishing an inter-linked and coordinated state system (Bredemear and Lewis 2008; Biesheuvel et al. 2009).
The productive effects of JSDP in Kono District and Peyima specifically are difficult to ascertain. Program efforts were concentrated in Freetown and Moyamba District, and the CCSSP, unlike JSDP, pursued police reform as state-building during a period that centered on attempts to consolidate the SLP’s monopoly over the making of order within Sierra Leone’s borders. This is indicative of processes of institution-building that are concentrated in a capital.
The holistic approach of the JSDP was the indication of a more comprehensive, and, on paper, a more intrusive variety of SSR as state-building that encompassed the justice and security field as a whole and focused on how it was to be governed. However, due to the breadth of activities under the JSDP, establishment of a networked state system in Freetown rather than in Sierra Leone as a whole became the default priority. In 2008-2009
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Moyamba District was chosen as the district outside Freetown in which the JSDP would ‘pilot’ its holistic approach. Practically, it was chosen because it had a number of statutory justice institutions, including a prison, four police stations and five police posts, encompassing 14 chiefdoms and a population of 260,000 people. The district was also chosen because if its easy accessibility to Freetown. The original JSDP program document suggested that the JSDP would branch off into other districts. This, however, did not occur, which in all probability was due to the overwhelming ambition of encompassing the justice and security field in its entirety. By 2009, a review referred to Moyamba in the context of JSDP as “a district test-bed for new projects and ideas” (Biesheuvel et al. 2009). The general focus of the JSDP in Moyamba has been on community access to courts and, more generally, institutions such as Partnership Boards. A so-called ‘circuit court,’ holding sessions across Moyamba, was established in an attempt to overcome the inaccessibility of many parts of the district (Bredemear et al. 2007).
in Kono District, officers complained that uniforms were not being replaced, and that they were operating with fewer vehicles. While elements of early police reform were still visible, the ability of the SLP to project authority through these kinds of props was diminishing. In sum, one review conducted by the UK government noted in 2011, “an effective police force is not affordable within Sierra Leone’s domestic budget” (Horn et al. 2011).
7.2.2.2 Approaching chiefs in ‘languages of stateness’
Rather than working with the hybrid order that they constitute, police reform under the auspices of JSDP categorized chiefs as part of the state system. It was, however, not taken into account that the sources of authority that chiefs draw on are both locally embedded and of the state. This led to mis-recognition of how authority is produced in Sierra Leone, which ultimately led to the fact that police reform contributed to rather than eradicated the hybrid order.
In late 2005, a National Policy Framework for the Justice Sector in Sierra Leone was presented within the JSDP framework. It was framed as a “holistic sector-wide” approach to support the “development of an effective, efficient, impartial and accountable justice sector capable of meeting the needs of all the people of Sierra Leone” (JSDP December 2005:2).
This document is long on formulations that emphasize the importance of ‘Customary/Traditional Laws and Practices’, for example, the development of policies on the judicial role of traditional leaders, implementation of initiatives that promote constitutional principles and human rights and enhanced accountability of traditional leaders to the public. Likewise, the Justice Sector Reform Strategy and Investment Plan, launched in February 2008, has as one of six targets to “improve public satisfaction levels with Local Courts, Paramount and Local Chiefs” (GOSL December 2007:V).
“Each system will have its own advantages and disadvantages and both need support,” one JSDP advisor noted, “even if the state system will inevitably require a greater share of financial resources” (Howlett-Bolton 2008:8). To some degree, this statement was more
theoretical than practical as working with the paramount and lesser chiefs never was a central objective of the JSDP (see Krogstad 2012b: 220). In Peyima specifically – and Kamara Chiefdom more generally – it was the paramount and lesser chiefs, rather than a government-appointed Court Chairman, who oversaw Local Court proceedings.
The Local Courts were operated according to a hybrid order, and yet, JSDP documentation suggests that they were part of the state system, which implies that they are managed by that system. A 2007 assessment says, “local courts constitute the lowest level of the formal system” (Bredemear et al. 2007). However, while they are under the oversight of, they are not managed by the Ministry of Local Government, which in practice remains too weak to play a meaningful role in this capacity. According to a civil servant in the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry also lacks the political will to actively regulate the local courts, primarily because it is accepted that they fall under the authority of paramount and lesser chiefs.
Articulating this kind of distance is common. Brima Acha Kamara, Inspector-General of Police until 2011, suggested in an interview: “our own role is quite different from the chiefdoms, because we are accountable to the law” (interview, Brima Acha Kamara 2009). Inherent to Acha Kamara’s statement is the perception of a split between police (state) and chiefs (society) - one is not hierarchically above the other, and that they belong to and oversee two different systems of order. (As I turn to shortly, this is a distinction that dissolves when practice of how the SLP and chiefs interact is observed.)
As noted above, substantive work had been undertaken in Freetown around the institutions that external advisers naturally gravitated towards as constituting the state. Inevitably, as the focus moved to the chiefdom level, as in Moyamba District, attempts by the JSDP to influence institutions controlled by the chiefs encountered the issue of distribution of power at the local level, and thus the composition of the justice and security field. Working with the chiefs became a deeply political endeavour where issues of power, resources and rights were at stake and where authority was being competed over (see Albrecht and Kyed 2011:5).
During the implementation phase of JSDP, there was no attempt to fundamentally alter the Local Court system. Rather, focus centered on how to confine chiefs to their legally- defined role, primarily through training in the arbitration of cases, a role that was intended for the effective and legitimate state, to recall Goldstone’s (2008:285-286) typology. However, actors belonging to the state system enter into a complex relationship with chiefs, where one cannot be said to stand hierarchically above the other. The two sets of institutions become integral to one another and their authority becomes mutually constitutive, not exclusive. It is not evident, as Baker (2008:158) suggests, that there is conscious intent behind state actions, that ‘it’, regardless of how “disunified” or “contradictory” it might be, “seeks domination over all other organizations within the national territory and is intent on establishing binding rules regarding the other organizations’ activities.”
It is, however, a default position of donor-driven programing to work with and operate on organizational formations that may be articulated in languages of stateness. Donors and individual advisors avoid engaging with de facto hybrid orders, because they are convinced that state institutions are the rightful holders of a monopoly over the making of order (see Albrecht and Kyed 2011). This is seen reflected in assessments of the JSDP carried out in 2007, 2008 and 2009, where remarkably little space, if any, is devoted to chiefs and the order they make (Bredemear et al. 2007; Bredemear and Lewis 2008; Biesheuvel et al. 2009).
The function and rationale of how chiefs operate, particularly in their political role, is not well understood by international actors. They believe that the institutions of the chief will wither away as state institutions are built. While some international actors may accept the importance of including chiefs in justice programs, the donors and the consultants they hire have yet to design programs that do not default towards the state-building rationale (see also Albrecht and Buur 2009).