Suchergebnisse

This book examines security in three cities that suffer from chronic violence: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Medellin, Colombia; and Kingston, Jamaica. In each, democratic states contend with subnational armed groups that dominate territory and play important roles in politics even as they contribute to fear and insecurity. Through a nested three-city six-neighborhood analysis of the role of criminal groups in governance, this research provides a deep understanding of the impact of crime on political experience. Neighborhoods controlled by different types of armed actors, operating in the same institutional context, build alliances with state officials and participate in political life through the structures created by these armed actors. The data demonstrate the effects criminal dominance can have on security, civil society, elections, and policymaking. Far from reflecting a breakdown of order, varying types of criminal groups generate different local lived political experiences

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, this work examines the problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. It argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption

Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, this work examines the problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. It argues that public policy change is not enough to stop the vicious cycle of crime and corruption.

This essay reviews the following works:
The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil. By Jaime Amparo Alves. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2018. Pp. 324. $27.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781517901561.
Prisons and Crime in Latin America. By Marcelo Bergman and Gustavo Fondevila. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xvi + 261. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108738194.
The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles. By Luis Daniel Gascón and Aaron Roussell. New York: New York University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 285. $30.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781479842254.
Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America. By Yanilda María González. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 355. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108820745.
Zonas Peligrosas: The Challenge of Creating Safe Neighborhoods in Central America. By Tom Hare. New York: Fordham University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv + 85. $9.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780823280919.
Self-Defense in Mexico: Indigenous Community Policing the New Dirty Wars. By Luis Hernández Navarro. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 263. $29.85 paperback. ISBN: 9781469654539.
A república das milícias: Dos esquadrões da morte à era Bolsonaro. By Bruno Paes Manso. São Paulo: Todavia, 2020. Pp. 304. $30.30 paperback. ISBN 9786556920610.

Over the past generation Latin America has experienced high levels of criminal violence associated with extortion, the drug trade, and other criminal rackets. While there has been considerable research into the role of state policy in controlling criminal violence, there has been considerably less investment in analyzing the success of social action to control both police and criminal violence in the high-conflict zones where criminal groups operate. The inadequacy of the existing literature emerges at least in part from the limited data on successful social efforts to control violence in urban areas controlled by organized crime groups. Drawing on over three hundred qualitative interviews conducted in four cities in Latin America and the Caribbean over an extended period of time, this article examines the various strategies used by civic groups to control violent activities on the part of police and criminal groups. The article observes six different forms of social responses to violence and points to the conditions under which these actions emerge.

Across the region, criminal organizations collude with the state, maintain local political order, and help nominate and elect politicians.

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 Rio's 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 Rio's broader political and social system.