Mexico's Unrule of Law

Implementing Human Rights in Police and Judicial Reform under Democratization

By (author) Niels Uildriks With Nelia Tello Peón

Publication date:

02 April 2010

Length of book:

332 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739128930

Mexico's crisis of security is unrelenting. Why is it so hard to establish the rule of law, and why does the country's justice system continue to struggle to deliver both security and adherence to democratic values and human rights? To answer these questions, Mexico Unrule of Law: Implementing Human Rights in Police and Judicial Reform under Democratization looks at recent Mexican criminal justice reforms, placing this Mexico City case study of the social and institutional realities of the evolving police and justice system within the county's long-term transition from authoritarian to democratic governance. In spite of the democratization on the electoral front, profound distrust has continued to characterize not only the relationship between citizens and state institutions but also social, inter-state, and intra-state relations. Against this background, the book analyses extensive and penetrating police surveys and interviews to offer innovative ideas on how to simultaneously achieve greater community security, democratic policing, and adherence to human rights.

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Mexican Policing and Reform: a Theoretical Introduction
Chapter 2: A Lynching of Police: A Case Study of Mexican Policing
Chapter 3: Mexico's Criminal Justice System: Organized Chaos
Chapter 4: Reducing Police Abuse: the Democratization Project
Chapter 5: From Inside the Police: A Survey
Chapter 6: Police and Politics: A Legacy of Mistrust and the Failure of Reforms So Far
Chapter 7: Police and Justice Reforms, Security and Human Rights
Appendix A: Methodology
Appendix B: Survey
Appendix C: Open Interview Protocol

The quality of democracy and the rule of law are the key issues of contemporary Mexico. Mexico's Unrule of Law examines the contradictions and complexities of a key player inside the Mexican law enforcement system: the police. The Mexican police exemplifies many of the fundamental issues that undermine democratization and rule of law: corruption, abuse of authority, generalized distrust of public institutions, lack of transparency, predominance of informal arrangements, and politicization. Moreover, the book demonstrates that throwing money and grand-design organizational reforms, much less militarization, are not likely to resolve the crisis of Mexican policing and law enforcement in general. Instead, the author calls for alternative strategies and projects of reform that link to the core of the problem: to reconnect citizens and the state in order to reassemble the state as an institutional and moral order from below.