TY - BOOK ID - 137775328 TI - Policing Democracy : Overcoming Obstacles to Citizen Security in Latin America PY - 2011 PB - Johns Hopkins University Press DB - UniCat KW - Violence KW - Police KW - Crime prevention KW - Internal security KW - Prevention. KW - Citizen participation. KW - History of the Americas UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137775328 AB - Latin America's crime rates are astonishing by any standard--the region's homicide rate is the world's highest. This crisis continually traps governments between the need for comprehensive reform and the public demand for immediate action, usually meaning iron-fisted police tactics harking back to the repressive pre-1980s dictatorships. In Policing Democracy, Mark Ungar situates Latin America at a crossroads between its longstanding form of reactive policing and a problem-oriented approach based on prevention and citizen participation. Drawing on extensive case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, and Honduras, he reviews the full spectrum of areas needing reform: criminal law, policing, investigation, trial practices, and incarceration. Finally, Policing Democracy probes democratic politics, power relations, and regional disparities of security and reform to establish a framework for understanding the crisis and moving beyond it. ER -