When she started her work, the final understanding was that South American nations had not reformed their police forces throughout their transitions to democracy as a result of there was a lot else that wanted to be finished. In that model of the story, fixing the police simply hadn’t been a precedence.
However when she dug somewhat deeper, she discovered that there really was an excessive amount of public demand for higher safety and crime management, and sometimes an excessive amount of anger in communities affected by police violence. The police hadn’t been neglected: That they had been protected.
The police have been politically highly effective as a result of they might selectively withdraw their companies, permitting crime and dysfunction to rise, upsetting anger at elected officers. Additionally they tended to be properly related, in a position to foyer successfully to guard their very own pursuits. That meant battle with the police was pricey for politicians, who tended to keep away from it, leaving police departments and practices largely unaltered.
However there was a selected, tough to attain set of circumstances that, if met, would result in police reform, Gonzalez discovered. Briefly summarized, her formulation was this: scandal + public unity + credible political opposition = reform.
The sequence began with a scandal or disaster that led public opinion to unite a majority of individuals in favor of reform, she wrote in her ebook “Authoritarian Police in Democracy.” If there was additionally an actual electoral menace from political opponents calling for reform, that could possibly be sufficient to influence leaders to behave in an effort to stave off their competitors.
In Argentina and Colombia, that sequence led to main reforms after high-profile police killings.
But when even a kind of components was lacking, the established order continued. In Brazil, the Carandiru bloodbath was definitely a scandal, and there was a reasonably strong political opposition that joined within the criticism, to some extent. However public opinion about it was fragmented: citing polls on the time, Gonzalez discovered that a couple of third of Brazilians permitted of the way in which that the police had dealt with the scenario. The second ingredient of the sequence, convergence of public opinion, was lacking. The end result: no reform.
