The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law

by Daniel M. Brinks

• ISBN13: 9780521872348
• ISBN10: 0521872340
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Documents the corrosive effect of social exclusion on democracy and the rule of law. It shows how marginalization prevents citizens from effectively engaging even the best legal systems, how politics creeps into prosecutorial and judicial decision making, and how institutional change is often nullified by enduring contextual factors. It also shows how some institutional arrangements can overcome these impediments. The argument is based on extensive field work and original data on the investigation and prosecution of more than 500 police homicides in five legal systems in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. It includes both qualitative analyses of individual violations and prosecutions and quantitative analyses of broad patterns within and across jurisdictions. The book offers a structured comparison of police, prosecutorial, and judicial institutions in each location, and shows that analyses of any one of these organizations in isolation misses many of the essential dynamics that underlie an effective system of justice.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Effectiveness and Inequality in the Legal System	p. 1
Overcoming Resistance	p. 3
The Problem of Police Violence	p. 9
The Dependent Variable: Legal Effectiveness	p. 18
Proposing an Explanation	p. 22
Implications for the Rule of Law	p. 35
Charting Injustice in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay	p. 37
Sources and Types of Data	p. 41
Comparing Violation Rates	p. 43
Comparing the Judicial Response to Violations	p. 56
The Likelihood of a Conviction Across and Within Jurisdictions	p. 76
Informational and Normative Shifts Across Jurisdictions	p. 80
Open and Notorious Violations	p. 82
Effective Application of the Law: Normative and Information-Gathering Successes	p. 87
See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Normative and Informational Shifts in Buenos Aires	p. 90
Garbage In, Garbage Out: Normative Success Frustrated by Information-Gathering Failures	p. 95
Overview of Normative and Informational Failures	p. 105
Buenos Aires - Political Interference and Informational Dependence	p. 109
Federal and Provincial Criminal Procedure	p. 110
Social Context	p. 114
The System's Sources of Information	p. 122
Prosecutors	p. 129
The Courts	p. 131
Summary	p. 139
Sao Paulo - Normative Autonomy and Informational Failures	p. 142
The Brazilian Code of Criminal Procedure	p. 144
Social Context	p. 149
The System's Sources of Information	p. 155
Prosecutors	p. 164
The Courts	p. 169
Summary	p. 175
Uruguay - Strong Results from a Weak System	p. 178
The Uruguayan Code of Criminal Procedure	p. 181
Social Context	p. 184
The System's Sources of Information	p. 189
Prosecutors	p. 194
The Courts	p. 195
Summary	p. 202
Cordoba - High Levels of Inequality in a Strong System	p. 205
The Code of Criminal Procedure in Cordoba	p. 207
Social Context	p. 209
The System's Sources of Information	p. 212
Prosecutors	p. 214
The Courts	p. 217
Summary	p. 221
Salvador da Bahia - Social Cleansing Under Political and Judicial Indifference	p. 223
The Code of Criminal Procedure	p. 226
Social Context	p. 227
The Investigative Police	p. 231
Civil Society Actors	p. 233
Prosecutors	p. 234
The Courts	p. 236
Summary	p. 239
Binding Leviathan	p. 242
The Empirical Findings	p. 243
General Conclusions from the Empirical Findings	p. 247
Institutional Theory Revisited	p. 256
Methods, Case Selection, and Sampling	p. 261
References	p. 271
Index	p. 285
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