How do authoritarian states organise their coercive institutions over space? We argue that autocrats maximise the utility of limited coercive resources by clustering them with segments of the population that are ideologically distant and have mobilisational potential. We test this proposition through a novel spatial approach, using a dataset that covers the universe of police stations and religious sites in China. We find that foreign religious sites are more likely to be found within walking distance (e.g., 500m) of police stations than other sites, even after controlling for estimated population size within 1km of each site. This finding implies that autocrats seek to increase their coercive capacity without increasing spending on their coercive institutions that could also threaten them, i.e., without heightening their “security dilemma.” This insight broadens our understanding of authoritarian rule.