middle east law and governance 6 (2014) 1-23 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/18763375-00602001 300854 brill.com/melg Informal Transactions with the Police The Case of Tunisian “Sex Crimes” Maaike Voorhoeve1 Post-doctoral fellow in the Rechtskulturen Programme of the Forum Transregionale Studien, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and Humboldt Universität Abstract This article examines the intersection between, on the one hand, informal transac- tions with the police and, on the other, ‘sex crimes.’ Although prohibited by law, infor- mal transactions have not been eradicated from the dealing between the police and civilians in Tunisia. Such transactions take place in case people have violated the law, but also, as this paper shows, when people have committed a ‘crime’ that is not described by legislation. In these cases, extra-legislative, informal norms are at play in two ways: the informal norm prescribing ‘paying off ’ the police officer, and the informal norm prohibiting a certain dealing between the sexes. By describing the workings of such transactions in detail, this article presents an insight in what Blundo and De Sardan call the ‘état du quotidien’ in Tunisia under the authoritarian regime. Keywords Tunisia – bribery – police – sexuality – informal norms On 4 September 2012, the rape of a young Tunisian woman by a group of policemen made the headlines of the Tunisian newspapers. In the night of 3 September 2012, three policemen were driving around when they noticed a 1 Special thanks go to Feriel Bouhafa, Jessica Carlisle, Willy Janssen, Malika Zeghal and an anonymous reviewer for their useful comments on previous versions of this article. Thanks as well to the Islamic Legal Studies Program of Harvard Law School for offering me the opportunity to carry out this research for one academic year at their institute. 0002133751.INDD 1 4/22/2014 11:55:20 AM