Baptist policing in Burma: swarming, vigilantism or community self-help?

This is a study of how vacuums in state services attract alternative providers. Christian churches in Kachin state engage in police work to tackle drug markets in response to heavy participation of state police in those markets and limited police interest in regulating them. Churches aim to induce democratisation of the police and responsiveness of the police to the rule of law. They have arrested police and helped catalyse many dozens of prosecutions of police for drug offences or drug-related corruption in Kachin state. Baptist police in the Golden Triangle use nonviolent swarming as an alternative to carrying arms when arresting heavily armed drug kingpins, police and military, and when seizing drugs.