Community Policing in Latin America: Lessons from Mexico City

Abstract

Community policing programmes are widely perceived and promoted as an important solution for the pressing problems of insecurity in contemporary Latin American cities, and for improving citi- zen-police relationships. By drawing on the results of empirical fieldwork conducted in Mexico City, the article presents a critical analysis of the local community policing effort. The article demonstrates that this policing effort is overly determined by a local context, characterized by clientelism, political factionalism and police corruption, which therefore renders its contribution to a sustainable improve- ment of local accountability and police legitimacy unlikely. Against this background the article calls for more empirical studies on this topic and a greater sensitivity for the embeddedness of policing pro- grammes within a wider political context.