By: Mark Ungar and Enrique Desmond Arias

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 for community policing by key actors, from Presidents to neighbourhood residents, and a continuity of that support through the entire process of community policing creation, from initial proposals to programme evaluation.

Policing & Society, Vol. 22, No. 1, March 2012, 1
13

By Fran Warren, Francesca Gualco, Hannah Davidson, Ella Edginton

Purpose of the paper: The main purpose of this paper is to assess how COVID-19 may have impacted international policing responses during the easing of lockdown in other countries in order to identify any useful learning. For this reason, evidence from Scotland is not included. Jurisdictions covered England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway and France. Note on the evidence This paper highlights factors around policing responses to be considered as part of forward planning, based on the evidence and intelligence available. The information in this paper was collected through a ‘rapid intelligence review’ of publicly available sources, such as relevant agency reports, government reports, and news reporting. This paper provides the most up-to-date available evidence, commentary and intelligence on international policing responses but as the evidence is rapidly evolving it may not be in all cases, completely up-to-date at the time of reading. Please note that the information provided covers the period up until 15 June 2020.   

Edinburgh: Scottish Government, Justice  Analytic Services, 2020. 76p.