Enrique Desmond Arias

Violent Democracies in Latin America

Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors : Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldan, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, Maria Clemencia Ramirez

The Dynamics of Criminal Governance: Networks and Social Order in Rio de Janeiro

Academic analyses of crime and policing in Latin America have generally focused on the failure of state institutions to guarantee a rule of law. This study, however, argues that the persistently high levels of violence in Rios favelas [shantytowns] result not from the failure of institutions but, rather, from networks that bring criminals together with civic leaders, politicians, and police. These contacts protect traffickers from state repression and help them build political support among the residents of the where they favelas operate. Rather than creating ‘parallel states’ outside of political control, then, these networks link trafficker dominated favelas into Rios broader political and social system.

Reassessing community-oriented policing in Latin America

In every part of Latin America, unprecedented levels of violence have even led to questions about the underlying quality of democratic rule. In response to this crisis, governments have enacted an array of policies, ranging from repressive mano dura crackdowns and adoption of new technology to the reform of criminal justice systems. But one of the most popular approaches to reform efforts has been community-oriented policing (COP), a strategy popularised in the USA in the 1990s, which is based on close collaboration between the police and the neighbourhood residents. COP focuses on the causes of crime rather than simply responsding to it by empowering citizens, building police community partnerships, improving social services and using better crime statistics. Street patrols, policy councils and youth services are some of the many COP programmes being adopted in Latin America and other regions. As other authors emphasise, this reform also entails restructuring of police forces to make them more flexible and responsive. Skogan and Hartnett (1997), for example, stress decentralisation of authority and foot patrols to facilitate citizen-police communications and public participation in setting police priorities and developing tactics. The results of these efforts, however, have been very uneven. Some programmes have shown considerable success while others have faced many difficulties and either been defunded or left to expire of their own accord. Why do some projects succeed where others fail? More importantly, what can Latin American policy-makers learn from past experiences in the region in order to develop more effective and successful policies for the future? This edition of Policing and Society takes a step towards answering these questions by bringing together security officials, practitioners and scholars to offer detailed analyses of community reform efforts at the local, regional and national levels throughout Latin America. The articles cover programmes in Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. By detailing the challenges facing reform and how to overcome them, these cases provide an important compendium about community policing in Latin America that will help practitioners and policy-makers build effective durable programmes. This introduction highlights critical issues that the individual articles develop further. Those challenges, as contributors discuss, fall along two main dimensions: support

Crime and plural orders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:

For the past generation scholars have written about violence, crime, and conflict in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. While this scholarship has developed an extensive understanding of the problem of violence and criminal control of the city’s favelas it has not yet effectively engaged in a discussion of the implications of differential types of crime creating local security orders. Building on research in two different city regions in Rio de Janeiro, this article examines how different types of crime groups emerge from varied forms of social disorganization and contribute to particular models of social control and order. The article examines the varying relationships and exchanges built by drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte (Northern Zone) and milícias in the city’s Zona Oeste (Western Zone). The actions of these criminal organizations emerge from and promote orders that affect the lived political, social, and economic experiences of residents of favelas.

Understanding the Fica Vivo programme: two-tiered community policing in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

This paper analyzes the efficacy of the Fica Vivo homicide control programme in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Our data shows that the programme encountered significant success in reducing homicides, as a result of its innovative two-tiered structure in which community-oriented policing units operated in conjunction with state-administered social programmes led by civil servants at each of the programme sites. These efforts helped to build local capacity to respond to violence and work with state officials, helped the police engage with residents in efforts to control violence, and enabled residents to hold police to account for local crime control efforts.

Criminal organizations and the policymaking process

ABSTRACT What role do criminal organisations play in policymaking? Evidence presented in this paper from Latin America and the Caribbean points to the complex ways that various types of criminal groups influence the policy process. Based on the structure of the criminal organisation and the relationship between these groups and state officials this article illustrates the different types of dynamics criminal groups contribute to the policy process. In some cases, these dynamics increase the costs of policies while in others they alter the content of policies and strengthen the position of criminal groups in the neighbourhoods where they operate. The article identifies three dimensions along which criminal groups intervene in the policy process: friction; division; and mediation. The article shows these dynamics by looking at how criminal groups intervene in the policy process in various gang-controlled neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, and Kingston.