Between promoting change and maintaining the status quo? Challenges to study of police reform in Latin America

• In Event: Roundtable: Latin American Criminology: Finding a Place Amid Global, Regional, and Local Challenges (Sponsored by Division of International Criminology)

Abstract

Governments and police agencies have begun police reform process during the last couple of years in many countries in Latin America. These calls for police reform are triggered mainly due to issues related to police violence and excessive use of force, mostly crowd control policing during protests and demonstrations, as well as the crime and violence issue. The presentation suggests a theoretical and empirical framework to study police reform in Latin America. This framework points out core dimensions to the study of policing in the region: institutional capabilities, effectiveness, legitimacy and trust, and contact between the police and the community. Also, the presentation highlights the current limitations to empirically addressing the limits, scopes and expected effects of police reform process and the role of the circulation of global policing models to inform these initiatives in the region.

Author

• Felipe Salazar, Rutgers University