Police Corruption in Latin America - Literature review Example

The Contradiction in “Police Lawlessness” Looking upon the of Latin American countries throughout history and to the present day, one finds a continuous expanse of uninterrupted war. In the past, this war may have been directed to threats beyond the respective nations’ borders; but in recent times, the war is no longer a confrontation with enemies abroad, but “ordinary delinquents” within (Zaffaroni). What we see in this “war on crime” is nothing more than a war on the inhabitants of societies which are governed by institutions that have established not an objective code of law, but a code of lawlessness—and a regime’s law enforcement that conducts its business by whim instead of reason. The extent of the lawless police forces’ extreme tactics cannot be overstated: torture as a means to information and punishment, the abuse of deadly force, and extrajudicial killings with impunity. In his “Defining the Role of Police in Latin America”, Paul Chevigny uses first-hand accounts and well-researched cases of lawless police in those regions to establish not only the human rights case for legitimate police work but also the practical one as well. His thesis is simply that lawful police in such societies will benefit all members of society, no matter of their place in it, and thus members of democratic societies have reason to create such police. This discussion shall be aimed at expressing agreement with Chevigny’s general argument; however, our task here will not be merely to underscore the strong points of his thesis, but rather to carry it to its logical conclusion: namely, that not only is police lawlessness inefficient for societies, but it is also a contradictio in terminis. Before demonstrating how police lawlessness is a contradiction-in-terms, however, one must evaluate Chevigny’s weaker claim that such lawlessness is “inefficient” for society. He posits that the reason for having rules of law, such as those which are most clearly at odds with the type of police lawlessness being engaged in today, are not for the public at large, but for the outcasts and delinquents which society as a whole sees little need to protect on an equal level. The central argument and purpose of his paper is in changing attitudes regarding the situation: that a lawless police force is not merely bad for the outcasts and the delinquents, but is bad for all strata of Latin American societies: rich, middle, and poor. To examine the extent of this lawlessness and contradiction with the rule of law, Chevigny brings up cases of torture, deadly force, and impunity. Torture, he says, is commonplace in many Latin American countries, where it is used equally to get information as well as in extrajudicial punishment. The abuse of deadly force, on his account, is used to control poverty-stricken neighborhoods, but is often superficially disguised as “shoot-outs” with criminals. The fact that more were killed than wounded suggests deliberate abuse of deadly force, and, in some cases such as São Paulo in 1994, where a civilian police was replaced by military forces, the judicial system was abandoned completely. These murdered civilians were not robbers, rapists, or especially violent criminals; most of them were not even suspected of violent crime at the time of their death (Chevigny 54-55). Chevigny concludes: “Deadly force is neither democratic nor authoritarian; it is used as an instrument of terror where the control by the government is weak, and where the poor are seen as potentially dangerous.” In describing impunity, he mentions that police also have special powers in some countries which emphasize their ability to violate the rule of law. And whenever it is proposed that these special privileges be repealed, the police complain that they are necessary to keep order: another case of the rhetoric of fear. And whenever police officers or officials are taken under review, the process abruptly ends with “influence, intimidation, sometimes bribery, and ultimately violence”. Importantly, Chevigny recognizes the contradiction in the fundamental nature of these governments: those nations cannot be “democratic”, by that word’s modern definition, unless they stop arbitrarily distinguishing between its people and start treating all citizens as equal before the law. Importantly, however, it is clear that some may not at all concern themselves about the theory of democracy: dictatorship, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy all seem to be the same (which suggests a form of anarchy, to be discussed later). Knowing this, Chevigny attempts to make the argument that “society cannot obtain ‘security’ through police lawlessness, precisely because it is lawless” not by appeals to the types of “whims of American liberals”, but by appeals to facts. He starts by noting that in cases of prevalent torture in Mexico, offenses are frequently “solved” by the admission of the tortured. As a result, innocent persons are incarcerated, guilty persons are free; the populace can no longer believe its government and the entire justice system loses its integrity (Chevigny 60). In Brazil, he notes the corrupt purposes of torture in property crimes, where the police torture in order to acquire the victim’s property, then sell the stolen goods back to the owners. A vicious cycle of torture then ensues when the same police torture the victim again to keep him for filing charges. And he also points out a tertiary result: that the police has virtually ability to legitimately solve real crimes, with real, persuasive evidence. This leads to failure to prosecute crimes when brought to trial. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, almost 90% of all homicide investigations have produced insufficient evidence for trial (Chevigny 61). In addition, extrajudicial killings, or the abuse of deadly force, results in “social cleansing” of those groups that the society as a whole sees as outcasts—homosexuals, children believed to be living a criminal life, and so on. But also political adversaries of the existing regime are also in danger, which Chevigny indicates is the situation in Mexico today. Individuals with high and low social status respectively are targeted equally by off-duty police officers as “hired guns”. Thus, it is not only the lower levels of society that are affected, but the elites as well. Ex-policemen are likely, with their specialized skills, to be hired by drug lords as members of a private army, which then often fight other private armies in turf battles. Chevigny ends with: “…the dangers of police lawlessness to the society as a whole… is that the crimes are part of a system of impunity that extends to all police crimes, whether or not they involve police brutality.” With the system resting on a system of bribes, corruption and brutality are indeed interrelated, “show[ing] the power of the police, their independence of the rest of the criminal justice system, and their ability to administer justice as they see fit… [T]he lawlessness of the police is in the interest of no one except the police and the circle of politicians…” Impunity also stands in the way of “security” in a society with lawless police; lawyers, judges, and journalists are the victims of threats when they try to seek the truth about police violence. Thus, we see the business of being critical or virtuous becoming a dangerous enterprise. Chevigny observes that a system of impunity starts with taking bribes, and when brutality and bribes are interrelated, no strata of Mexico City society is safe. The low wages paid for the danger involved in police work then essentially drives the corruption. Taking the extra step from ignoring a crime to aiding a crime is fostered by the system of impunity. Accordingly, police give instrumental help to kidnappers who abduct members of wealthy families, who, in response, hire unregulated private security companies. This point on kidnapping only further proves the thesis that a lawless police force is bad for all members of a society. Chevigny then continues this line of thought: that the primary interest of corrupt police is money, and with impunity, they will continue to commit crimes that bleed societies. Police will help in drug trafficking into the United States and violent crimes will remain prevalent. Police forces become an instrument of power when they are no longer given the responsibility of peace-keeping but an instrument of terror against the population. Police forces are such in times not only of revolution—times not unfamiliar to much of the Latin American world—but of profound political and social divides that haunt most of those countries yet today. It is then that they are acted upon by these political and social forces which lie beyond their control; and hence, we see the history of police—lawful or lawless—as a mirror image of the general state of any given society at any given time. The lawless police force is liable to become a “state within the state”—the ironclad boot of a dictatorship or the occupying military in São Paulo or Mexico City. In such times we see the fundamental change in police operations: a political police, a new institution which expresses undying loyalty to a regime. Violence against individuals in isolated cases could never be dismissed as a distinct possibility; however, violence against the masses as a whole, as is apparent here, required fundamental changes in procedural and structural makeup (Sage Publications, Ltd.). Hence, we contrast the police of objective law and the police of subjective law. But what we see is that subjective law is not really law at all; and a police which enforces subjective law does not enforce law, but the dictates of whim. In López Portillo Vargas’ piece “The Police in Mexico”, he presents an argument saying that the lawless Mexico City police force simply represents the “informal code” which moves the political system as a whole. Surveying the history of their police, he concludes that “the correlate to this history is the crowning of illegality”; that is, no different from political police in the past, Mexico City police forces respond to informal codes, and are unable to comply to their own law (Marquez). But unlike authoritarian states of the past that countered dissension with brutality, the Mexicans counter it with bribery and privileges. “The pretense of legality”, says Vargas, “placed the police in a growing dynamic of conflict… the police institutions were not—and are not—capable of comprehending the changing needs of society.” One such change has been the transition to democracy; and freedom is a necessary condition for democracy. Unfortunately, security is one of the “instruments the state creates to guarantee the exercise of freedom”. According to Vargas, a lawless police force in Mexico City precludes any possibility of maintaining security, and therefore, maintaining the integrity of the democratic state. How may one rightly call such “police lawlessness” a contradictio in terminis—an oxymoron? Contemporary police forces in certain Latin American countries were not built for enforcing objective law; that is, as described before, what can be called “police” in these countries today was nothing more than what we could safely call a military fifty or sixty years ago. Hence, they deploy the same tactics—torture, deadly force, impunity—that an army might be observed to use in times of war, despite the fact that they are not dealing with armed enemies, but civilians of their own state. What these police forces resemble more than a police force is an occupying army, imposing its will upon the people. To describe it differently, the law enforcement is not enforcing law, but enforcing the will of some other agency that has no interest in the proper functioning of government. Indeed, the proper function of government is an entirely separate and complex issue, one that has been debated for millennia. But the modern conception can be found as Thomas Jefferson formulates it in the Declaration of Independence, where he states: “that [men] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men” (emphasis mine). What we have here in the statement italicized is the explicit proclamation that the proper function of government is to “secure these Rights”—the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—which are, most notably, individual rights. One may conclude then that the proper function of such a governmental system based on the political philosophy of the Declaration—is in the protection of individual rights. But what differentiates a government’s protection of these rights from, say, a private agency’s ability to do so? The answer lies in a government’s exclusive ability to create an objective law code. An objective law code is the means by which a government protects individual rights; without it, a government is no different from a defense contractor. But what about a police force (an extension of government) which is lawless? The answer is equivalent to a law code without a law code. In other words, a contradiction. One may rightly say that such a contradiction is conceptually unacceptable, and that such governments and law enforcement agencies have no right to exist—as their very nature precludes the very possibility of their being able to fulfill their function. Thus, the question is not “is police lawlessness inefficient for society?”but rather “are these actually police forces?”And the answer must necessarily be “no”. In addition, as Chevigny states in his conclusion, “the police cannot be viewed as a ‘problem in isolation’… If they operate in a society rife with corruption, they will be corrupt, and will in fact probably contribute part of their gains to the [government].” In other words, it cannot be merely that the police are lawless, for if this were the case, then the government would simply give the police law to enforce. However, since this does not occur, we are left to conclude that the government itself has no law. And a government without law, too, is a contradiction; and such “governments” are nominally so and more aptly called “circuits of organized crime” or “the instruments of warlords”. If these are not substantively governments, then what are they? I posit that they are forms of anarchy, disguised as constitutional republics. The institutions that are called governments are agencies that enforce their own laws and need not respond to the people, and they enforce their power—not law—using a “police” force. In this State of Nature, it is a bellum omnium contra omnes, a war of all against all. Only the war is not fought between individuals, but of individuals against an institution which is supposed to bring an objective law system into place. Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes once said: “[D]uring the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Only by “common power” here, Hobbes does not mean a government but a law, for a government cannot exist without law; and it is precisely under a lawless police force—and the lawless government behind it—that we find these particular Latin American countries in the State of Nature (Bailey and Chabat). Nevertheless, as Chevigny points out in the latter portion of his essay, as austere a picture as this may be, improvements in the situation are being made. Attempts are being made at limiting impunity for acts of aggression: police officers are being tried and convicted, or are being transferred to special programs if they have taken a life. What Chevigny recommends as a remedy is the training of judges to recognize corruption, to outlaw confessions made only to police, to repeal arbitrary police edicts, to increase accountability by changing the procedure in investigating police abuses, and to increase the role of the federal government’s oversight. Nevertheless, he notes, these do not address the issue of ensuring security by limiting the scope of police corruption; he suggests that paying officers more and requiring more stringent qualifications will help the situation. But what is ultimately necessary is the willingness on the part of senior officers to actively root out corruption and release officers known to be crooked. An internal investigative unit—maintained by the central government—would also be necessary for objectivity, but without implementing a military structure of police to do so. Assuming that a proper government did exist, what is the function of police in such a democratic society? Unlike firemen, who are supposed to make judgments based largely on natural science, police forces are entrusted with decisions that are political, social, and psychological in nature. Police are supposed to play a major role in creating and implementing a proper law enforcement policy in the community. But what must also play in such a system are the courts of law: delegated the responsibility of ensuring that governmental power shall not be abused at a loss of individual rights (Remington). One may contrast these ideals with the reality of the current situation in Mexico City, where the situation is the paradigm case in large Latin American urban centers. In such regions, bribery and corruption are so widespread that young recruits often seek employment in law enforcement to start businesses or gain capital; but considering the relatively low wages normally paid to police officers by the state, this should appear odd. Indeed, police officers do not possess an interest in enforcing law, but padding their own pockets (Artega). As Anzoie et al have found, both bribery (the solicited or unsolicited collection of money in refer for non-enforcement of illegal activity) and extortion (the demanding of payments from civilians who may be accused of illegal activities) are “highly visible and highly frequent”; in fact, although the “money involved per transaction is low, the cost to both government and civilians is very high”. The fact that a large portion of the population cannot identify either of these practices as forms of corruption indicates a very strong desensitization to the activities. Hence, we have an answer to Chevigny’s question about why such a democratic society is unwilling to respond. Police lawlessness in Mexico City is also marked by a corrupt diversion of police resources to those who can pay for those services: wealthy businessmen who keep the police at bay with their private fortunes, or criminals, smugglers, and dealers who bribe police with a percentage of their unlawful earnings. Although in most cases this resource reallocation is limited to “favorable treatment” and is not economically devastating, it poses a serious risk to societal security and public safety—the reason for the creation of police in democratic societies. The police then are free to openly engage in criminal activities like drug trafficking and kidnapping. Incredibly, the court system, which serves as the nerves and tendons of the police department, is involved as well in this behavior. Police often sell their privileged right to arrest and detain people “according to the law” to the highest bidder, and thus help support a drug industry that ultimately cripples the economy. These activities, taken together, not only mean wasteful spending on a police force and court system that is propagating crime instead of fighting it, but a widespread civilian mistrust and fear of police. And as a result, the police are not involved in protecting individual rights and maintaining security precisely because no one wants police involvement. And once a society loses faith in the police as a law enforcement agency, and instead perceives them to be nothing more than a gang of thugs, there can be no law. One may object to this last suggest on the grounds that the Mexican government does exist: the government does make laws. However, the making of laws presupposes the ability, and willingness, to enforce them. After all, for example, the United States could very well make laws that prohibit submachine guns in Mexico City; however, the United States lacks the ability to enforce such laws. That is, even if the Mexican government makes laws and expects them to be enforced, if law enforcement agencies do not enforce them (or the correct agencies are powerless to do so), their dictates are meaningless. Laws must necessarily be enforced, and when a court system is as corrupt as the enforcement agencies themselves, all hope is lost for societal security until concentrated reforms are implemented (Robinson and Scaglion). Reforms, then, must be implemented according to a two-headed strategy, according to Anzoie et al: (1) to reduce the level of corruption and (2) alter public perceptions and expectations of the police. As detailed before, such objectives may lead to structural and procedural changes that will not falter in the way such reforms have faltered in Mexico City for the past 30 years, mostly due to the rhetoric of fear. Previous reforms have failed as they have not addressed the dual-aspect nature of the problem, specifically the strategy of changing public perception (Bailey and Chabat). Addressing the public’s views of police as a corrupt gang of thugs by, say, changing traffic police to all women (a strategy introduced in Mexico City in 1999), wipes the rust off of the exhausted anticorruption rhetoric. As a result, the desensitization which has resulted from this corruption will begin to fade, and the democratic nature of the Mexican government—as well as most of the governments in Latin America—will hopefully resolve the remaining obstacles to achieving police enforcement that is effective and beneficial to the public it is supposed to protect and serve (Davies). Chevigny’s assessment of police lawlessness in Latin America is correct but incomplete; although he makes the astute observation that a corrupt police force is not an isolated problem, he falls short of condemning governments themselves for the problem. With it established that police lawlessness is a contradictio in terminis, nothing except the most radical changes to police structure and procedure will be potent enough to force these agencies to fulfill their intended function. I have remarked previously that times of political or social upheaval present, as in Latin America, unique transitions in history from peacekeeping police forces to political police forces; and when considering how political police forces are transitioned back into traditional peacekeeping police forces (usually by war), one realizes the uphill climb that is ahead. But as Confucius said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”; and such a single step should be the formulation of a powerful policy of reform, one which can stand up to the rhetoric of fear, change the public’s perception of police, and take the first steps in battling impunity and privilege for police. One should admit that calls for “radical change” or “revolution” in the context of newborn democracies and weak markets should not usually be taken too seriously (Kaufman). However, in the past, such calls for revolution came in the midst of injustice, vice, and profound contradiction. Now, the situation is no different. Works Cited Anzoie, et al. "Reducing Incentives for Corruption in the Mexico City Police Force." International Worksop, Public Affairs 869 (Spring 2004): 1-25. Artega, Rivera. "Everything in This Job is Money: Inside the Mexican Police." World Policy Journal (2000): 61-71. Bailey, John and Jorge Chabat. "The Police in Mexico: Political Functions and Needed Reforms." Bailey, John and Jorge Chabat. Challenges to Mexico and the United States. San Diego: University of California San Diego, 2002. 109-135. Chevigny, Paul. "Defining the Role of the Police in Latin America." Mendez, ODonnel, Pinheiro. The (Un)rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. 49-70. Davies, Audrey M. "Police, the Law, and the Individual." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1954): 143-151. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. New York: Touchtone Publishers, 1997. Jefferson, Thomas. "Declaration of Independence of the United States of America." Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 1776. Kaufman, Natalie Hevener. Globalization and Children: Exploring Potentials for Enhancing Opportunities in the Lives of Children and Youth. London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002. Marquez, Jesus Silva-Herzog. El antiquo regimen y la transicion en Mexico. Mexico City: Planeta/Joaquin Mortiz, 1999. Remington, Frank J. "The Role of Police in a Democratic Society." The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science (1965): 361-365. Robinson and Scaglion. "The Origin and Evolution of the Police Function in Society: Notes Toward a Theory." Law & Society Review (1987): 109-153. Sage Publications, Ltd. "Police Forces." Journal of Contemporary History (1972): 199-200. Zaffaroni, E. R. "The Right to Life and Latin American Penal Systems." Annals, AAPSS, 506 (1989): 57-67. Read More