Supporting Mano Dura: Police Practices & Citizens’ Perceptions of Deservingness

• In Event: Drugs, Crime and Territory in Latin America

Abstract

Mounting empirical evidence suggests that aggressive policing exacerbates, rather than reduces, violent responses by criminal groups. In contrast, strategies of conditional repression, in which the government conditions it use of violence against criminal groups to their behavior and informally tolerates someof their illegal activities tend to be more effective in reducing criminal violence (Lessing 2017; see also Denyer Willis 2015). One would therefore expect that highly aggressive and repressive policing practices would be avoided by policymakers. However, evidence from El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico and, more recently, Argentina suggests the opposite: aggressive policing practices are widespread in the region, under the guise of the need to be “tough on crime” (mano dura). How do we explain the persistence of these public securities?  An understudied aspect of the prevalence of “tough policing” is the role of public opinion in support for these kinds of practices. This project seeks to understand why citizens support aggressive policing. Much like welfare policies (Oorschot 2000, Aaroe and Petersen 2014, Kahl 2005, Petersen 2012, among others) and the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms (Albarracín and Gamboa 2017), we argue that support for these policies is driven by perceptions of deservingness. Citizens will support aggressive policing if they believe that some individuals or social groups are “criminal” or a threat to social order and therefore do not deserve the right to due process.  Taking advantage of a policing program implemented since 2016 in high-violence neighborhoods in the city of Montevideo (Uruguay), the study uses in-depth interviews and analysis of media in conjunction with conjoint experiments to test this theory of public support for harsh policing. The Uruguayan case is of particular interest to study mechanisms of deservingness. Unlike many Latin American countries with extremely high (or epidemic) levels of violent crime, Uruguay is relatively peaceful. Observing the deservingness mechanism at work in this context would offer insights about the pervasiveness and persistence of harsh policing policies in other world regions with lower levels of criminal violence.

Authors

• Lucia Tiscornia, CIDE -- Mexico City

• Juan Albarracin Dierolf, Universidad Icesi

• Verónica Pérez Bentancur, Universidad de la República

• Hernán Flom, University of California Berkeley