Police Democratization as a Driver of Urban Inequality

• In Event: 1249 - Global Communities

Abstract

This paper explores how ongoing reforms of the Buenos Aires police force have modified the relationship between city residents and public officials, fomenting new forms of democratic deliberation and political accountability which, ironically, tend to reinforce extant urban inequalities. Theoretically, it builds on the work of Tilly (2003), Gamson (1992), and Lee and McQuarrie (2015) to discuss how “top-down” and “bottom-up” democratic processes can exacerbate inequality. It then extends this frame to the realm of police reform, identifying the linkages between policing, crime, and democratic participation, and urban inequality, and describing how these same “bottom-up” and “top-down” processes can lead to the preferential deployment of coercive force. The paper then analyzes ongoing police reforms in Buenos Aires, Argentina, drawing on empirical data collected in interviews with public officials and systematic observations of neighborhood security forums. It offers an analytic categorization of citizen grievances, highlighting the blurry line between disorder and criminality, and arguing that neighborhood security forums offer a unique venue for collective meaning work (Eliasoph 1997) in which residents and police can forge a shared understanding of what constitutes a “crime” and how police should intervene. It goes on to analyze the efforts of the Ministry of Security to reclaim public spaces throughout the City of Buenos Aires by limited their occupation by poor youth, ambulant venders, car parkers, prostitutes, and the homeless. It argues that these strategies may serve to bolster citizen trust in the police and may offer measurable political gains for elected officials but that, in terms of public security, they are only effective at the micro level. When viewed from a broader geographic vantage point, increased police intervention to reclaim public spaces for “average” citizens tends to displace these “problems” rather than resolving them, thereby exacerbating social and spatial inequalities.

Author

• Leslie Elva MacColman, University of Notre Dame