Building an Enforcement State: The Economic Architecture of Order in Ghana

Building an Enforcement State: The Economic Architecture of Order in Ghana

For any society that wants to be modern rather than merely noisy, three things are non-negotiable: safety, protection of citizens’ rights to an orderly public space, and credible enforcement of rules. Everything else—investment, productivity, even democracy—rests on that foundation. Ghana today is wobbling on that foundation, and the evidence is everywhere from vandalised trains to assemblies storming private businesses as if court orders were optional.

The absence of consistent public order has quietly become a tax on our national productivity — a disorder tax that raises costs, deters investment, and corrodes trust. Every chaotic street junction, every reckless minibus, every unregulated hawker in a live lane reflects a state that has ceded control over its own space. What Ghana needs is not more policing in the abstract, but a rational, layered enforcement architecture—each tier with clear mandates, predictable financing, and measurable performance.

Why Orderly Public Space Is a Basic Right, Not a Luxury

An orderly social organization isn’t just about clean streets; it’s about citizens having a clear, predictable expectation of safety and lawful behavior in public and semi-public spaces—roads, markets, workplaces, stations, and malls. When that expectation collapses, people start to feel they live at the mercy of gangs, “task forces,” or whoever is willing to be most aggressive that day.

Look at what is happening on the Tema–Mpakadan railway. Since commercial service began on October 1, 2025, trains have faced at least four stone-throwing attacks near Tema, damaging windscreens and windows while passengers were on board. In one case, a child was reportedly induced with GH¢20 to throw stones or place them on the tracks, in what authorities describe as deliberate sabotage with potential for catastrophic derailment.

You also have rail infrastructure vandalised by illegal miners, including documented cases of rail lines damaged in the Western Region by galamsey operations. These aren’t just “incidents”; they are textbook examples of a state that has lost its monopoly on the organization of public space.

At the same time, research on crime trends in Ghana shows thousands of robbery cases over just a few years—5,696 robberies between 2014 and 2017, with daily averages rising from up 3 to 5 cases per day. Older police data show more than 1,300 robberies in 2016 alone, roughly four per day. Even if the overall crime rate has lately stabilised—police leadership cites an overall rate of about 0.33% in 2024, slightly down from the year before —the reality many businesses feel is that robbery and theft at shops, fuel stations and private premises are far too common.

And then there is the subversion of lawful process by the state itself. We all saw video of Ledzokuku (LEKMA) Municipal Assembly officials, led by the MCE, marching into China Mall, ordering customers and workers out and threatening to lock up the store over alleged unpaid property rates—without a court order or a bailiff. That’s not enforcement; that’s arbitrary power. When the state behaves lawlessly, it teaches citizens that the law is just a weapon of convenience.

This is why citizens need absolute clarity of the presence of the law in their neighborhoods and in public spaces:

• clarity that vandalising trains or rail lines will bring swift, certain penalties;
• clarity that robbers will be caught and prosecuted;
• clarity that even the municipal assembly must go to court before touching a private business.

You don’t get that clarity with one big, centralised, over-stretched police service. You only get it if policing is highly decentralised along functional lines, with each arm having a clear mandate, tools, and accountability.

A Functionally Decentralized Policing System

The solution is not to invent new uniforms for optics, but to give those uniforms real institutional meaning. A functionally decentralised system—Traffic Police, Metro & Public Transport Police, State (Highway) Police, and District Police—makes the “presence of the law” legible to citizens.

Here is what I believe we need to get in place to give citizens clarity on the presence of law in our communities and public spaces. And there is a way to fund it – from the crime itself.

1. Traffic Police and Traffic Courts: Order on Urban Roads Up

The Traffic Police (light blue tops, navy bottoms) are the guardians of order on city and peri-urban roads. Their job is simple but vital: enforce speed limits, helmet and seat-belt use, lane discipline, and drunk-driving rules, and ensure commercial vehicles meet safety standards.

Every officer should work with body-worn cameras and electronic ticket devices, feeding directly into a national database. Infractions go to dedicated Traffic Adjudication Bureaux, not general criminal courts, so cases are resolved quickly and predictably. This is the Ghanaian analogue to New York’s Traffic Violations Bureau, which exists precisely to prevent minor traffic cases from jamming up the criminal justice system.

For citizens, the message is:

• If you drive recklessly, you will be caught.
• If you are caught, the process is clear and fast.
• If you obey the rules, the roads become safer for everyone.

Foot patrols, CCTV monitoring, and rapid-response motorbike units will provide agility and visibility. Fines from urban violations—illegal vending, littering, obstruction—feed directly into metro-level funds, of which a portion pays performance bonuses for officers meeting compliance and safety targets. Here, enforcement becomes not a shakedown, but a public service.

2. Metro & Public Transport Police: Protecting Everyday Urban Life

The Metro & Public Transport Police (yellow tops, blue bottoms) own the space where urban life is densest: bus terminals, stations, BRT lanes, interchanges, and large public squares. Their mandate is to prevent harassment, theft, and vandalism; enforce sanitation and vending by-laws; and protect commuters.

This unit is Ghana’s version of the British Transport Police—a civilian-facing force that keeps trains, stations and terminals safe and predictable. In the context of recent stone attacks on trains around Tema, this is exactly where such a specialised, highly visible force is needed: no one should doubt that rail corridors and terminals are under constant lawful protection, not left to the mercy of saboteurs and stone-throwers.

For business owners, this also means something very specific: municipal officials don’t get to storm your shop and shut it down on a whim. If revenue mobilisation is required, it must go through legal processes—court orders, bailiffs, and, if necessary, police support following due procedure. What happened at China Mall should be treated as a cautionary tale, not a template.

3. State Police for Highways: Protecting Major Corridors and Infrastructure

The State Police (light brown tops, blue bottoms) are Ghana’s Highway Patrol and infrastructure guardians. Their job is to protect the major inter-regional corridors—Accra–Kumasi, Accra–Takoradi, Accra–Aflao, Tamale–Bolgatanga—and the strategic infrastructure that runs alongside them: rail lines, pipelines, power lines.

They deploy average-speed cameras, mobile radar, and patrols, but also cooperate with rail and transport authorities to secure corridors like the Tema–Mpakadan line against vandalism and sabotage. With four recorded stone attacks on trains and formal reports of attempts to derail trains by placing stones on the tracks, this can’t be treated as mischief; it’s an attack on national infrastructure.

Their duties are distinct: enforce speed and weight limits, inspect long-haul trucks and buses, respond rapidly to accidents, and deter highway crime. They must be equipped with average-speed cameras, mobile radar systems, and weigh-in-motion sensors to automate much of the enforcement process, thereby reducing human interference.

Here, functional decentralisation means:

• one arm is clearly responsible for highways and corridors;
• citizens know who to call and who is accountable when trains or highways are attacked;
• performance is measured by fewer crashes, fewer attacks, and faster response times.

4. District Police: Everyday Order and Community Protection

The District Police (green tops, blue bottoms) are the face of the law in ordinary neighbourhoods, from Madina to Bawku. They enforce local by-laws, respond to burglaries and robberies, and work with assemblies on sanitation, markets, and closing times.

Crime pattern research shows robbery has been geographically uneven but persistently present across regions, with spikes in Greater Accra and other urban areas. Citizens should not have to accept robberies at shops or filling stations as just “part of living in the city.” District policing, if properly staffed and measured, is where that norm is reversed.

District units also handle minor traffic offenses, enforce motorbike helmet laws, and collaborate with health and sanitation officers on environmental crimes. About 60% of district recruits should come from within their own communities to ensure familiarity and trust, with periodic rotations to prevent local capture. Weekly coordination with district officials aligns policing with local development goals.

Fines collected from local infractions—sanitation violations, unlicensed trading, nuisance offenses—are shared: part funds local police bonuses, and part supports civic infrastructure like lighting, pedestrian crossings, and waste systems. It’s a simple mechanism: when the local environment improves, both citizens and police benefit.

Functionally, district units become:

• first responders to robberies, burglaries and assaults at businesses;
• partners with local traders’ associations and residents;
• enforcement arm for district by-laws—but always via due process, not task-force theatrics.

Financing Enforcement: Turning Disorder into Revenue

The genius of this system is fiscal self-reliance. Ghana doesn’t need to print money to pay for better policing; it needs to organize the chaos. Every cedi ceased from illegal activities and crime, every cedi collected from traffic fines, sanitation penalties, and public-space violations should be pooled into the Road and Public Safety Fund.

This fund follows a fixed formula: 70% for national equipment, training, and technology (cameras, vehicles, data systems); 30% distributed as performance-linked bonuses to the police units responsible for enforcement. Crucially, the fund must be audited quarterly, with results published online — a radical transparency that builds public trust and starves corruption.

By rewarding officers for compliance outcomes — fewer crashes, faster response, cleaner districts — Ghana aligns incentives from top to bottom. Enforcement becomes a public good that pays for itself.

If we want policing—and the citizens in uniform who put their lives on the line—to be effective, we have to be willing to reward them properly. The mechanism is straightforward and transparent:

• All fines and lawful proceeds from crime (traffic fines, by-law penalties, administrative sanctions) are channelled into a Road and Public Safety Fund.
• This fund is ring-fenced and audited, with quarterly figures published online.
• A fixed share—say, 30%—is distributed as performance-linked bonuses to the specific commands (traffic, metro, state, district) that generated the enforcement, based on KPIs: crash reduction, response time, crime clearance rates, complaint resolution.
• The remaining 70% finances equipment, cameras, patrol vehicles, training, and maintenance.

Note what this is not: it is not a license for shakedowns. The whole point of electronic ticketing, bodycams, and automated enforcement is to reduce discretion at the roadside. The proceeds of crime, once collected formally, become a way of paying for the very system that suppresses crime. In macro terms, we turn a negative externality—disorder—into a revenue stream that funds order.

The Endgame: Visible, Lawful State Presence Everywhere

The core argument here is simple:

• You cannot have an orderly social organization if safety, orderly public space, and rule enforcement are negotiable.
• Incidents like stone attacks on trains, vandalised rail lines, routine robberies at private businesses, or assemblies shutting down malls without court orders are all symptoms of the same disease: a weak, blurred enforcement system where nobody quite knows who is in charge.
• The cure is functional decentralisation of policing, coupled with clear citizen rights and hard incentives for the police.

Citizens should wake up each morning with absolute clarity:

• which uniform protects their road, their market, their train line, their neighbourhood;
• what happens when someone breaks the rules;
• and how the state itself is constrained by law when it deals with private property.

That clarity is not just a legal or moral achievement. It is an economic development strategy. Societies where trains are not attacked, where malls aren’t arbitrarily shut, and where robberies are the rare exception rather than a common story are societies where capital, both human and financial, is willing to stay and invest.

In other words: orderly public space is not a side issue. It’s the ground floor of Ghana’s development model.