Police reform in Peru.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Costa, Gino
• Date: 01 August 2005

Following a political transition, Peru launched a police reform in 2001. This study focuses on internal and external impediments to the reform. The highly transparent and democratic process won public support and the backing of rank-and-file officers, but failed to overcome opposition from police leadership. The strength of senior police opposition is directly related to financial interests threatened by anticorruption initiatives. In the external environment, government weakness and lack of presidential support present critical breaking points. Additional external weaknesses include the politically independent profile of the Interior Ministry reform team, the lack of a politically negotiated reform plan, and the absence of international backing. Presidential support failed at a critical moment when police challenged the Interior Minister. Noting the limitations of different evaluative criteria in policing reforms, the article argues that important advances have been achieved in policing in Peru even as short-term impacts are limited.

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The police reform launched in Peru in mid-2001 presents an interesting case study both because the process itself demonstrates considerable creativity and innovation, and because the serious setbacks it has faced exemplify the broader problems manifested in policing and policing reforms across Latin America. Here, as in other regions of the developing south, until very recently the police functioned almost entirely as key instruments of social and political control for authoritarian regimes. On the whole, although not entirely, political transitions have reduced or ended police repression of political opponents of governments. The introduction of internal disciplinary mechanisms and external civilian review have been used in various settings to address human rights violations, though abuse, even extrajudicial executions by police, remains stubbornly persistent in many Latin American countries.

Despite these advances, it is clear that the effort to establish civilian control and democratic accountability of the police has a long way to go. Civilian expertise in security policy is lacking, corporatist habits in large national police institutions remain powerful, and creating civilian control of policing policies while avoiding old habits of manipulating policing operations for personal or party benefit remains a major challenge. Given the clear ramifications of police performance for government popularity, economic growth and, in the Peruvian case, for foreign relations, finding the correct balance between policy control and operational interference is a complex undertaking. As we will discuss in this article, it presents an enormous challenge when operational priorities compete with reform priorities. Before presenting this case study, we will briefly contextualise the Peruvian experience in Latin American policing history.

From Militarisation to Police Reform

After centuries of neglect and military subjugation, policing in Latin America came to the fore only at the end of the 20th century as democratic transitions, peace processes and an alarmingly rapid rise in crime and social violence drew the attention of policymakers, the public and international actors. In the last fifteen years, policing reforms have been undertaken from Mexico to Argentina, and there is a small but growing cadre of academics, policy-makers and civil society actors engaged in conceptualising, formulating and implementing policing reforms.

Military dominance of the state in Latin America originates in colonial history and in the independence movements of the early 1800s. National independence was won in military operations headed by Creole elites opposed to Spanish rule. Militaries preexisted national states and represented elite interests. Through two centuries of independence, most Latin American nations have experienced repeated cycles of military dictatorship, and police throughout the region came under the authority of ministries of defense.

During the Cold War, in the face of revolutionary movements protesting political and economic exclusion, the region's militaries developed 'National Security Doctrines' that explicitly charged the military to protect the state against internal ideological enemies (McClintock, 1985, 1992). From the 1970s through to the early 1990s, National Security Doctrines guided military and policing strategies under the authoritarian governments in South America and during Central America's civil conflicts, costing tens of thousands of lives.

This history left a profound imprint: practically every police force in the region was corrupt and abusive, most used torture routinely, and many carried out extrajudicial executions and 'social cleansing' killings (Chevigny, 1995). Structurally, Latin America had the most profound militarisation of policing of any region of the world (Bayley, 1993). Police forces that focused on protecting specific governments or political regimes, and that fought alongside the military in brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, proved ill-equipped to conduct criminal investigations or implement crime prevention strategies (Palmieri, 2000; Neild, 1999).

The turning point came in the early 1990s. The Central American peace processes of the 1990s brought about the broadest institutional reforms of policing, with significant international support. Central America's postconflict reforms focused on demilitarising internal security, placing police under civilian ministries, creating new police academies, and strengthening accountability mechanisms (Costa, 1995, 1999). These common elements of the reforms reflect the role of the international community and, to a lesser degree, local cross-border learning (Stanley, 2000). However, demilitarisation has not necessarily brought with it 'fully accountable, nonpartisan, participatory, and effective security systems' (Call, 2002, p. 20). Already in the throes of a postconflict wave of social violence and crime, this subregion now faces a boom in youth gangs which has provoked a public and media outcry and spurred draconian antigang laws.

In contrast to Central America, negotiated transitions from military to civilian rule in the rest of Latin America did not bring a rapid focus on policing. In both the transitional settings of the Southern Cone and nontransitional settings such as Colombia or Mexico, police reforms have emerged more recently, generally in response to police brutality, corruption and ineffectiveness in the face of rising crime rates (Buvinic & Morrison, 2000; The World Bank, 1997; World Health Organization, 2002). Since the early 1990s, reforms have been undertaken at national, state and city levels in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. In contrast to Central America, these reforms are heterogeneous, including efforts to introduce community policing (Sao Paulo, Chile), the introduction of external civilian review (Brazil, Colombia), modernisation of personnel systems and anticorruption initiatives (Argentina, Colombia), and reforms guided by foreign advisors, such as ex-New York Police Commissioner William Bratton's work for the municipal police in Caracas, Venezuela, or Giuliani Associates' recent contract with Mexico City. (1)

A common aspect of these police reforms is their partial and fragile nature, which is highly leadership-dependent and typically not sustained over successive governments. Reformers confront deep vested interests in the police and the paucity of civilian knowledge and policy-making capacity in the public security arena, where policy is often understood solely in terms of increasing police resources and powers (Serbin). Furthermore, counterreform efforts find easy support for 'tough on crime' measures from a public acculturated to repressive security approaches and living with increasing insecurity.

Transition and Reform in Peru

Peru, like the rest of Latin America, has civil law judicial and policing structures inherited from Spain and Portugal. The European or continental model of policing is characterised as centralised, militaristic and close to government. (Mawby, 1999) Another aspect of this model throughout Latin America is a divided rank structure, with separate recruitment, training and promotions opportunities for senior officers (oficiales) and rank-and-file officers (sub-oficiales and agentes). Peruvian police are forbidden to unionise, and indeed only won the right to vote in 2003. Legal processes are largely written and formal. Although judicial reforms have been undertaken across Latin America, moving the region toward a semi-adversarial model with increasing use of oral jury trials, both judicial and military reform are lagging behind in Peru.

The Peruvian National Police (Policia Nacional del Peru, PNP) was created in 1988 with the integration of three preexisting forces: the Republican Guard (the most militarised of the three); the Civil Guard (which also had a military rank structure); and the Investigative Police (the most clearly civilian). In the unification process, however, the most militarised traditions prevailed.

Peruvian policing has an inauspicious history. Policing was militarised under military government from 1968 to 1980. Through the 1980s and 1990s the police confronted Peru's brutal Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement (Sendero Luminoso) and another smaller guerrilla group (MRTA). For much of this period, the police were under direct military command in emergency zones that covered nearly half the country for over a decade. Both the police and military were...