5 - Policing in Hard Times

Summary

Chapter 5 explores the prolonged institutional decay of the Colombian National Police, particularly during the 1980s and early 1990s, and considers the factors that impeded comprehensive structural reform. Following a period of generalized loss of legitimacy across the Colombian state resulting from widespread political and criminal violence, the early 1990s saw a range of transformative policy reforms – from health and education to fiscal policy – and an institutional overhaul in the form of an ambitious new Constitution. Reform of the National Police, however, did not gain much traction, despite widespread authoritarian coercive structures and practices, weak institutional capacity, and inefficiency in fighting crime. I demonstrate how the National Police leveraged its structural power – flowing from its primary role in fighting the country’s war against drug cartels and its institutional and financial ties to the United States – to constrain the policy agenda and thwart reform attempts, even in a political environment that was highly conducive to a range of institutional and policy reforms. I then show how fragmented societal preferences over policing and security, often divided along class lines, generated conflicting demands and provided little electoral incentive for politicians to push for police reform, reinforcing institutional persistence.