Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas

John Bailey, Lucía Dammert, John Bailey, Lucía Dammert

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780822972945
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas - John Bailey and Lucía Dammert
• 2. Brazil’s Public-Security Plans - Emilio Enrique Dellasoppa and Zoraia Saint’ Clair Branco
• 3. Public-Private Partnerships for Police Reform in Brazil - Paulo de Mesquita Neto
• 4. From Public Security to Citizen Security in Chile - Lucía Dammert
• 5. The Institutional Identity of the Carabineros de Chile - Azun Candina
• 6. Armed Conflict and Public Security in Colombia - Gonzalo de Francisco Z.
• 7. Demilitarization in a War Zone - María Victoria Llorente
• 8. Security Policies in El Salvador, 1992–2002 - Edgardo Alberto Amaya
• 9. Violence, Citizen Insecurity, and Elite Maneuvering in El Salvador - José Miguel Cruz
• 10. Public Security and Police Reform in Mexico - Marcos Pablo Moloeznik
• 11. Local Responses to Public Insecurity in Mexico - Allison M. Rowland
• 12. From Law and Order to Homeland Security in the United States - John Bailey
• 13. Police-Community Conflict and Crime Prevention in Cincinnati, Ohio - John E. Eck and Jay Rothman
• 14. Assessing Responses to Public Insecurity in the Americas - John Bailey and Lucía Dammert
• Notes
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index