Book Review: Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America by Yanilda María González
| Author | Matthew Light |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221113636 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Yanilda María González. Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin
America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020; 353, xii pages pp.: 9781108830393,
$34.99 (paperback).
Reviewed by: Matthew Light, University of Toronto, Canada
When does it become possible to reduce the level of police violence against civilians
through legislation and other policy change? This is the question that Yanilda
González takes on in this ambitious book analyzing the political conditions that enable
significant police reform in democratic states. Through a carefully structured comparison
of South American countries, González demonstrates that the key to creating a less
violent police lies in a specific political correlation of forces, rather than in underlying
institutional or social factors.
Most countries in South America experienced significant periods of authoritarian rule,
often by right-wing military dictatorships, as recently as the 1980s, which gave way to a
mixed picture of successful democratic transitions, flawed democracies, and in some
instances (notably Venezuela and perhaps soon Brazil) democratic backsliding resulting
in the rise of a new dictatorship. Yet, even in regimes with free and fair elections, freedom
of speech and the press, and judicial independence, South America still displays high
levels of violence, both overtly political and criminal. Along with the rest of Latin
America, the region features the world’s highest homicide rate, as well as severe pro-
blems of police killings of civilians, again among the highest in the world. The coexist-
ence of functioning democratic institutions with extreme police brutality is the point of
departure for this study. As González notes, policing and security do not in practice con-
stitute a “public good”but are subject to “distributive contestation”(38). Thus, when
democratic political processes produce policy outcomes that allow police violence
against civilians to continue unimpeded despite outcry from at least some citizens, the
explanation probably has to do with those democratic political processes themselves.
González argues that South American politics features two factors that strongly
impede efforts to restrain police violence: first, wealthier and more politically mobilized
citizens often favour giving the police a free hand to deal with crime (the so-called mano
dura); and second, the police themselves, as a continuing organizational actor, strongly
resist constraints on their behaviour. Even where there is broad public support for police
Theoretical Criminology
2022, Vol. 26(4) 684–691
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806221113636
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