This book project - Oversight Intimacies: Police Violence and Reform in Kenya - explores how police reform and accountability unfold in practice, focusing on Kenya as a critical site of analysis. Around the world, policing institutions are under increasing scrutiny for their use of force and lack of accountability. This book investigates both formal oversight institutions, such as civilian review boards or internal affairs units, as well as the informal, everyday practices through which police misconduct is monitored—from civil society documentation to how officers informally watch each other. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Nairobi, the project introduces the concept of “oversight intimacies” to capture how these processes are shaped by personal relationships, power dynamics, and social struggles. Rather than treating reform as a purely legal or bureaucratic challenge, Oversight Intimacies reveals it as a deeply human, relational process. It offers a new lens to rethink accountability—one that foregrounds lived experience and everyday interactions. While grounded in the Kenyan context, the project speaks to broader global questions about how to achieve real change in policing and governance. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing debates in anthropology, law, urban studies, and African studies, and proposes a more nuanced, grounded approach to justice and institutional transformation.
2026