Public Security And Police Reform in the Americas

by Bailey, John; Dammert, Lucia

• ISBN13: 9780822959137
• ISBN10: 0822959135
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-28
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

The events of September 11, 2001, combined with a pattern of increased crime and violence in the 1980s and mid-1990s in the Americas, has crystallized the need to reform government policies and police procedures to combat these threats. Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas examines the problems of security and how they are addressed in Latin America and the United States. Bailey and Dammert detail the wide variation in police tactics and efforts by individual nations to assess their effectiveness and ethical accountability. Policies on this issue can take the form of authoritarianism, which threatens the democratic process itself, or can, instead, work to "demilitarize" the police force. Bailey and Dammert argue that although attempts to apply generic models such as the successful "zero tolerance" created in the United States to the emerging democracies of Latin America-where institutional and economic instabilities exist-may be inappropriate, it is both possible and profitable to consider these issues from a common framework across national boundaries. Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas lays the foundation for a greater understanding of policies between nations by examining their successes and failures and opens a dialogue about the common goal of public security.

Author Biography

John Bailey is professor of government and director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University.  He is the author of Governing Mexico: The Statecraft of Crisis Management. Lucfa Dammert is coordinator of program security and citizenship, Latin American Faculty of Social Science (FLACSO-Chile) in Santiago, Chile.

Table of Contents

Public security and police reform in the Americas	p. 1
Brazil's public security plans	p. 24
Public-private partnerships for police reform in Brazil	p. 44
From public security to citizen security in Chile	p. 58
The institutional identity of the Carabineros de Chile	p. 75
Armed conflict and public security in Colombia	p. 94
Demilitarization in a war zone	p. 111
Security policies in El Salvador, 1992-2002	p. 132
Violence, citizen insecurity, and elite maneuvering in El Salvador	p. 148
Public security and police reform in Mexico	p. 169
Local responses to public insecurity in Mexico	p. 187
From law and order to homeland security in the United States	p. 205
Police-community conflict and crime prevention in Cincinnati, Ohio	p. 225
Assessing responses to public insecurity in the Americas	p. 245
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