Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T05:33:41.229Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2020

BEATRIZ MAGALONI Open the ORCID record for BEATRIZ MAGALONI [Opens in a new window]  and
LUIS RODRIGUEZ Open the ORCID record for LUIS RODRIGUEZ [Opens in a new window]
BEATRIZ MAGALONI*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
LUIS RODRIGUEZ*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
*
Beatriz Magaloni, Professor, Department of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, magaloni@stanford.edu.
Luis Rodriguez, PhD Student, Department of Political Science and Researcher at the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab, Stanford University, luisrs@stanford.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions—a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region—has worked to restrain police brutality.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 114 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 1013 - 1034
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We thank Roberto Hernández and Alejandro Ponce for their leading role in convincing INEGI of the importance of adding to the ENPOL the questions on torture and due process we use in this paper. We also thank Ana Laura Magaloni and Marcelo Bergman, who together with other researchers at CIDE, pioneered collecting these types of questions among prisoners in Mexico. Prior versions of this paper were presented at the Policing Conference at Princeton University and the Human Rights and Repression Conference at Stanford University. Prior versions were also presented at the Center for Latin American Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University, and at the David Rockefeller Center at Harvard University. We thank participants in these events for their feedback. We thank Horacio Larreguy, Frances Hagopian, Jonathan Mummolo, Robert Bates, and Jonathan Furszyfer for detailed comments and Alice Wang and Cesar Vargas for help in proofreading our paper. We also wish to thank the editors of the APSR and three anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback. Replication materials can be found on Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JORLQM.

References

Acemoglu, Daron, and Johnson, Simon. 2005. “Unbundling Institutions.” Journal of Political Economy 1130 (5): 949–995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anaya, Alejandro. 2014. Violaciones a los derechos humanos en el marco de la estrategia militarizada de lucha contra el narcotráfico en méxico, 2007–2012. Cuadernos de Trabajo del Monitor del Programa de Politica de Droga.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua, and Pischke, Jorn-Steffen. 2009. Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ansell, Ben, and Samuels, David. 2010. “Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach.” Comparative Political Studies 43 (12): 1543–1574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Astorga, Luis. 2003. Drogas sin fronteras [Drugs without borders]. Mexico City: Grijalbo.Google Scholar
Autor, David. 2003. “Outsourcing at Will: The Contribution of Unjust Dismissal Doctrine to the Growth of Employment Outsourcing.” Journal of Labour Economics 21 (1): 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aviña, Alexander. 2012. “Seizing Hold of Memories in Moments of Danger.” In Challenging Authoritarianism in Mexico: Revolutionary Struggles and the Dirty War, 1964–1982, eds. Herrera, F. and Cedillo, A., 40–59. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bailey, John, and Dammert, Lucía. 2005. Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Benjamini, Yoav, and Hochberg, Yosef. 1995. “Controlling the False Discovery Rate: A Practical and Powerful Approach to Multiple Testing.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B: (Methodological) 57 (1): 289–300.Google Scholar
Biebesheimer, Christina, and Mark Payne, J.. 2001. IDB Experience in Justice Reform: Lessons Learned and Elements for Policy Formulation. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, Sustainable Development Department.Google Scholar
Blaydes, Lisa. 2018. State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blei, David. 2012. “Probabilistic Topic Models.” Communications of the ACM 55 (4): 77–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blei, David, Ng, Andrew, and Jordan, Michael. 2003. “Latent Dirichlet Allocation.” Journal of Machine Learning Research 3: 993–1022.Google Scholar
Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinks, Daniel M. 2007. The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calderón, Gabriela, Robles, Gustavo, Díaz-Cayeros, Alberto, and Magaloni, Beatriz. 2015. “The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (8): 1455–1485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castellanos, Laura. 2007. México Armado. Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era.Google Scholar
Castillo, Juan Camilo, Mejía, Daniel, and Restrepo, Pascual. 2020. “Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War.” Review of Economics and Statistics 102(2): 269–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cingranelli, David, and Richards, David. 1999. “Measuring the Level, Pattern and Sequence of Government Respect for Physical Integrity Rights.” International Studies Quarterly 43(2): 407–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Courtenay Ryals, and Moore, Will H.. 2010. “What Stops the Torture?” American Journal of Political Science 54 (2): 459–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruz, José Miguel. 2011. “Criminal Violence and Democratization in Central America: The Survival of the Violent State.” Latin American Politics and Society 53 (4): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danner, Mark, and Fay, George R.. 2004. Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror, Volume 2. New York: New York Review Books.Google Scholar
Davenport, Christian. 1996. “Constitutional Promises” and Repressive Reality: A Cross-National Time-Series Investigation of Why Political and Civil Liberties Are Suppressed.” The Journal of Politics 58 (3): 627–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian. 1999. “Human Rights and the Democratic Proposition.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43 (1): 92–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian, and Armstrong, David A.. 2004. “Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 to 1996.” American Journal of Political Science 48 (3): 538–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian, and Inman, Molly. 2012. “The State of State Repression Research since the 1990s.” Terrorism and Political Violence 24 (4): 619–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davenport, Christian, Moore, Will H., and Armstrong, Dave. 2007. “The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib: Are Democratic Institutions a Palliative or Panacea?” Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Diane E. 2006. “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico.” Latin American Politics and Society 48 (1): 55–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dell, Melissa. 2015. “Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War.” American Economic Review 105 (6): 1738–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Domingo, Pilar. 1999. “Judicial Independence and Judicial Reform in Latin America.” In The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies, eds. Schedler, Andreas, Diamond, Larry Jay, and Plattner, Marc F., 151–175. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Domingo, Pilar. 2000. “Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32 (3): 705–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dube, Arindrajit, Dube, Oeindrila, and García-Ponce, Omar. 2013. “Cross-Border Spillover: US Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico.” American Political Science Review 107 (3): 397–417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores-Macías, Gustavo A., and Zarkin, Jessica. 2019. “The Militarization of Law Enforcement: Evidence from Latin America.” Perspectives on Politics 1–20. doi:10.1017/S1537592719003906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallagher, Janice. 2017. “The Last Mile Problem: Activists, Advocates, and the Struggle for Justice in Domestic Courts.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (12): 1666–1698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass. 2006. Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gonzalbo, Fernando Escalante. 2011. “Homicidios 2008–2009: La muerte tiene permiso.” Nexos, enero. https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=14089.Google Scholar
González, Yanilda. 2019. “The Social Origins of Institutional Weakness and Change: Preferences, Power, and Police Reform in Latin America.” World Politics 71 (1): 44–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Villarreal, González, Roberto, . 2014. Historia de la desaparción: Nacimiento de una tecnología represiva. Ciudad de México: Editorial Terracota.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Karen J. 2005. The Torture Debate in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammergren, Linn. 2003. “International Assistance to Latin American Justice Programs: Toward an Agenda for Reforming the Reformers.” In Beyond Common Knowledge: Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law, eds. Jensen, Erik G. and Heller, Thomas C.. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, Chap. 9.Google Scholar
Hammergren, Linn. 2008. “Twenty-Five Years of Latin American Judicial Reforms: Achievements, Disappointments, and Emerging Issues.” The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 9 (1): 89–104.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen. 2002. “The Logic of Strategic Defection: Court–Executive Relations in Argentina under Dictatorship and Democracy.” American Political Science Review 96 (2): 291–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen, and Ríos-Figueroa, Julio. 2011. Courts in Latin America. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, Keele, Luke, Tingle, Dustin, and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2011. “Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies.” American Political Science Review 105 (4): 765–789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2013. “Identification and Sensitivity Analysis for Multiple Causal Mechanisms: Revisiting Evidence from Framing Experiments.” Political Analysis 21 (2): 141–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapiszewski, Diana, and Taylor, Matthew. 2008. “Doing Courts Justice? Studying Judicial Politics in Latin America.” Perspectives on Politics 6 (4): 741–767.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronick, Dorothy, and Hausman, David. 2019. “Policing Police.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
La Porta, Rafael, Lopez de Silanes, Florencio, Pop-Eleches, Cristian, and Shleifer, Andrei. 2004. “Judicial Checks and Balances.” Journal of Political Economy 112 (2): 445–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langer, Máximo. 2007. “Revolution in Latin American Criminal Procedure: Diffusion of Legal Ideas from the Periphery.” The American Journal of Comparative Law 55 (4): 617–676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langston, Joy K. 2017. Democratization and Authoritarian Party Survival: Mexico’s PRI. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessing, Benjamin. 2015. “Logics of Violence in Criminal War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (8): 1486–1516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz. 2006. Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz, Magaloni, Ana Laura, and Razu, Zaira. 2018. “La tortura como método de investigación criminal: El impacto de la guerra contra las drogas en méxico.” Politica y gobierno 25 (2): 223–261.Google Scholar
Magaloni, Beatriz, Vivanco, Edgar Franco, and Melo, Vanessa. 2020. “Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro.” American Political Science Review 114 (2): 552–572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michel, Verónica, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 2013. “Human Rights Prosecutions and the Participation Rights of Victims in Latin America.” Law & Society Review 47 (4): 873–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mummolo, Jonathan. 2018a. “Militarization Fails to Enhance Police Safety or Reduce Crime but May Harm Police Reputation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (37): 9181–9186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mummolo, Jonathan. 2018b. “Modern Police Tactics, Police-Citizen Interactions, and the Prospects for Reform.” The Journal of Politics 80 (1): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navia, Patricio, and Ríos-Figueroa, Julio. 2005. “The Constitutional Adjudication Mosaic of Latin America.” Comparative Political Studies 38 (2): 189–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass, and Weingast, Barry. 1989. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Journal of Economic History 49 (4): 803–832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Donnell, Guillermo. 1993. “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries.” World Development 21 (8): 1355–1369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osorio, Javier. 2015. “The Contagion of Drug Violence: Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Mexican War on Drugs.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (8): 1403–1432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Correa, Pérez, Catalina, Carlos Silva, and Gutiérrez, Rodrigo. 2015. “Índice de letalidad. Menos enfrentamientos, más opacidad.” Nexos, julio. Disponible en línea en: www.nexos.com.Google Scholar
Peters, Edward. 1996. Torture: Expanded Edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Powell, Emilia, and Staton, Jeffrey. 2009. “Domestic Judicial Institutions and Human Rights Treaty Violation.” International Studies Quarterly 53(1): 149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ríos, Viridiana. 2013. “Why Did Mexico Become So Violent? A Self-Reinforcing Violent Equilibrium Caused by Competition and Enforcement.” Trends in Organized Crime 16 (2): 138–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ríos-Figueroa, Julio. 2007. “Fragmentation of Power and the Emergence of an Effective Judiciary in Mexico, 1994–2002.” Latin American Politics and Society 49 (1): 31–57.Google Scholar
Robles, Gustavo. 2016. “Essays on the Political Economy of Violence in Mexico.” PhD Diss. Stanford University.Google Scholar
Rodrigo de la Barra Cousino, Carlos. 1998. “Adversarial vs. Inquisitorial Systems: The Rule of Law and Prospects for Criminal Procedure Reform in Chile.” Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas. 5: 323.Google Scholar
Rodríguez Ferreira, Octavio, and Shirk, David. 2015. “Criminal Procedure Reform in Mexico, 2008–2016: The Final Countdown for Implementation.” Technical Report, Justice in Mexico Project, University of San Diego.Google Scholar
Ruthven, Malise. 1978. Torture: The Grand Conspiracy. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Shirk, David A. 2010. “Justice Reform in Mexico: Change and Challenges in the Judicial Sector.” Working Paper, Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Trans-Border Institute, University of San Diego.Google Scholar
Shirk, David A., and Cázares, Alejandra Ríos. 2007. “Introduction: Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico.” Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico, eds. Cornelius, Wayne A. and Shirk, David A., 1–47. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Silva Forné, Carlos, Correa, Catalina Pérez, and Rivas, Rodrigo Gutiérrez. 2012. “Uso de la fuerza letal: Muertos, heridos y detenidos en enfrentamientos de las fuerzas federales con presuntos miembros de la delincuencia organizada.” Desacatos 40: 47–64.Google Scholar
Silva Forné, Carlos, Pérez Correa, Catalina, and Gutiérrez Rivas, Rodrigo. 2017. “Índice de letalidad 2008–2014: Menos enfrentamientos, misma letalidad, más opacidad.” Perfiles latinoamericanos 25 (50): 331–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svolik, Milan. 2012. The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sánchez, Arianna, Magaloni, Beatriz, and Magar, Eric. 2011. “Legalist versus Interpretivist.” In Courts in Latin America, eds. Helmke, G. and Ríos-Figueroa, J., 187–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trejo, Guillermo, and Ley, Sandra. 2018. “Why Did Drug Cartels Go to War in Mexico? Subnational Party Alternation, the Breakdown of Criminal Protection, and the Onset of Large-Scale Violence.” Comparative Political Studies 51 (7): 900–937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uildriks, Niels. 2009. Policing Insecurity: Police Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Uildriks, Niels. 2010. Mexico’s Unrule of Law: Implementing Human Rights in Police and Judicial Reform under Democratization. Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Ungar, Mark. 2002. Elusive Reform: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Walzer, Michael. 2004. Arguing About War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wantchekon, Leonard, and Healy, Andrew. 1999. “The “Game” of Torture.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43 (5): 596–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watt, Peter, and Zepeda, Roberto. 2012. Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry. 1997. “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of the Law.” American Political Science Review 91 (2): 245–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Magaloni and Rodriguez Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JORLQM
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Magaloni and Rodriguez supplementary material

Magaloni and Rodriguez supplementary material

Download Magaloni and Rodriguez supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.4 MB