Public-security approach that uses civilians to enhance police efficiency, particularly where there are limited security resources and weak police-citizen relations and trust.
Problems and Purpose
Participatory security in Latin America addresses issues at the intersection of citizen security and participatory democracy. Citizen security, a term first coined by Latin American governments and NGOs in the 1990s, refers to a shift in the philosophy behind security towards “threats to public, social and political order posed by rising common crime and public fear of crime” rather than solely threats to government [10]. However, successfully establishing citizen security policies requires a certain threshold of necessary resources to implement security policies. In Latin American states lacking resources and effective security policies, participatory security provides a more feasible solution to citizen security.
A typology of participatory security has been constructed to better understand the incentives for this relatively new concept [4]. The two most critical variables are Bureaucratic Capacity and Resources (capacity) and Police-Society Relations (relations). Where police capacity to maintain public safety is high, and relations are cohesive, there is little incentive for citizen involvement because the public trusts the police, and the police do not require the contributions of the public. Where there is high capacity, and relations are fractious, government oversight is both desirable and achievable – government and police oversight over citizens is likely, and there is, again, little incentive for the government to invite citizen participation in security. It is when capacity is low that incentives for participatory security grow significantly. Where relations are cohesive and capacity low, auxiliary participatory security is most likely – participation is widespread due to mutual police-citizen trust and incentive to compensate for lacking capacity, and space is created for citizen input “identify[ing] the most pressing local problems, thereby helping police to better direct the deployment of scarce resources” [2]. A fractious, low-capacity scenario is the most likely to incentivize thin participatory security – participation is carefully restricted, police face few obligations, and citizens hold minimal authority. Figure 1 [4]
An overarching incentive for governments to implement participatory security has been likened to a “safety valve” [4]. Citizens often view state security forces as incompetent and even criminal in states where security forces function under capacity. The “safety valve” provides a realistic, achievable strategy for governments to alleviate public pressure calling for reforms. Rather than devising legislation to allocate greater funding to police forces, develop stricter methods for preventing corruption, or increase policing efficiency, a tedious and costly process, states may attempt to placate their citizenry with disingenuous promises of greater political influence and participation.
Governments may also incorporate participatory security to rebuild relationships between citizens and states. This public solution, which requires and encourages citizen involvement, expands police-parallel presence throughout communities. Its goal is not to scare community members into compliance but to provide more opportunities for them to use state channels to solve security problems rather than relying on paramilitary or other elicit methods of security enforcement [2]. This method helps to reestablish state legitimacy and encourage citizen reliance on legal, public services. Furthermore, this converts civilians into a sort of “alarm system” that can act as a middleman between crimes/threats and security forces. Implementing these aspects of participatory security thus allows police to focus their limited resources and capacity on security enforcement more efficiently, and subsequent improvements in police effectiveness may thus improve police trust and relations.
Origins and Development
Since the beginning of the 1980s, countries across Latin America have made a notable transition toward democratization. Pressure from the West, as well as dissatisfaction with the authoritarian regimes of the 1970s, signaled a new era of Latin American politics focused not on the historical legacy of elitist, limited democracies but on the creation of participatory structures aimed at inclusion and receptive to the increasingly mobilized civil societies across the continent [7]. Among these participatory reforms were implementations of participatory security measures in response to rising distrust between the citizenry and state police forces in three main areas: São Paulo State, Brazil, Columbia, and Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. The concept of participatory security was not created until a few decades after these institutions. While there is no clear creator of this method, Dr. Yanilda Marie Gonzalez has heavily researched the concept, and much of the theory behind this work can be attributed to her [2].
São Paulo State was the first government to install participatory security structures as a measure to rebuild trust between citizens and police. Heralded in by Governor André Franco Montoro, the state’s first democratically elected governor after years of oppressive military rule, the Community Security Council (CONSEGs) was founded in 1985 as a method to support under-resourced police activity as well as provide a more robust police-citizen relationship [6]. The CONSEGs arose out of Montoro's previous failures to reform the Military Police (MP) as well as the civil police, two notoriously corrupt institutions under the previous military dictatorship, due to police backlash [4]. Unlike the later cases of Columbia and Buenos Aires, the relations between citizens and police officers in São Paulo were reasonably cohesive, and participatory security was installed as a means to accommodate the under-resourced police forces. “By definition, CONSEG are entities made up of groups of people from the same neighborhood or municipality, who come together to discuss and analyze, plan and monitor the solution of their community security problems, develop educational campaigns and strengthen ties of understanding and cooperation between several local leaders” [6]. These CONSEGs were informed that they were serving as part of the police force as well as helping them structure it. Participants were told they were the “eyes and ears of the police,” whose purpose was to assist in the actual criminal investigations without telling police what to do [4]. However, due to the better relations between police and citizens, as well as Montoro’s failure at broader police reform, there was little incentive to create substantial accountability measures for citizens to ensure the police enforce their decisions and left the police largely uncontrolled despite community meetings.
Eight years after the implementation of São Paulo’s CONSEGs, Columbia instituted a similar strategy of participatory security to handle the lack of police resources as well as the strained relationship between citizens and police. Unlike the CONSEGs, which were a single policy reform, Columbia’s National System of Citizen Participation included various broad police reforms to reduce crime and corruption across the country [8]. This authority was composed of an executive, the police, and representatives from various social groups. The primary functions of the National Police and Citizen Participation Commission were to: “Propose policies to strengthen the preventive action of the Police; Promote citizen participation; Recommend plans and programs; Channel complaints; Encourage National Police agents to provide service in their regions of origin” [8]. However, the powers of the social group participants were relatively weak as there was no specified power to hold their police accountable, while executive authorities were given complete power over the police, creating an imbalanced commission [4].
The Dirty War in Argentina created some of the most substantial mistrust between police and citizens on the continent. By the time the Buenos Aires province began considering a participatory security structure, the police had become known as la maldita policia (the bloody police). Police-citizen relationships were entirely adversarial when Buenos Aires founded the vecinales de seguridad (neighborhood security forums) as a method of resolving this conflict [12]. These forums focused on community coalition building as well as creating a more responsive police force with an emphasis on crime prevention. While São Paulo and Columbia’s participatory institutions have since maintained their formal structures, the Buenos Aires forums have been shut down and reinstated multiple times due to changing Argentine politics (especially by Security Minister Arslanián, who purged the police force eight times to fight corruption until the forums were officially shut down in 2007) [12].
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Within the three discussed instances of participatory security, public participation has widely varied due to differing levels of trust and accessibility. While in theory, participatory institutions are open to all citizens, they face practical issues of “asymmetrical citizenship,” where, due to socioeconomic differences, some citizens’ voices are treated as more or less valuable [3]. The issue of asymmetrical citizenship can affect membership and challenge the ideas of these spaces as representative of their states. Columbia’s National System of Citizen Participation made an effort to solve this issue by only requiring a single representative from various civic and social groups, such as unions, businesses, universities, ethnic minorities, and others, to be present at each meeting [12]. This quota system made participation quite inaccessible as each social group was only allocated one position on these boards, regardless of social group size. The Buenos Aires forums created a similarly limited participatory structure where only “nongovernmental community organizations and entities with recognized social participation” were allowed into forums and given authority which limited the ability of socially unconnected individuals to participate in the decisions on their security force [8].
How it Works: Process, Interaction, and Decision-Making
The Process
Participatory security promises citizens in large cities inclusion in public governance through civil participation that impacts security and policing policies. Participatory mechanisms allow politicians to strategically divide and distribute responsibility to manage social and public dissatisfaction with procedures or policies [4]. As discussed above, according to Dr. González, participatory mechanisms act as “safety valves” that control discontent and pressures for reform while improving the public image of politicians and police departments. González further explains that participatory security is “more likely to be a top-down policy response to politicians’ strategic incentives than the direct result of a bottom-up demand.” Top-down policies occur when decisions are made at the highest level and then communicated to lower levels or departments. It is understood that once new rules or procedures are received, they will be followed and enforced.
Planning, Preparations, and Resources
In the case of the Buenos Aires province in Argentina, it was hard to raise awareness for participation at first; attitudes were negative towards participation, community members did not know what was happening, and there was distrust in the policing institution [4]. Because of this negativity and unsureness, advocates of participatory security were deterred from planning and making any preparations. However, the province police and advocates for a more participatory system were able to form the neighborhood security forums (vecinales de seguridad). More in-depth research and analysis of established participatory security institutions need to be made in order to determine how countries, cities, and provinces plan and prepare and what resources went into forming and sustaining the participation.
Participants and Interactions
Most interactions between participants happen through open public meetings designed for discussions, with an emphasis on stating and addressing a problem and then sorting out a solution. During these meetings, participants have the opportunity to interact with each other, government officials, and organizers. Participants make up all aspects of the community, from business owners to teachers, retired individuals, and people experiencing homelessness. They also include organizations and advocates of marginalized people like sex workers, LGBTQ+ youth, and drug users [3]. Most CONSEGs are active and meet regularly; in 2011, there were an average of 47 participants, and 86.4% of meetings had 25 or more attendees [3]. While there is information on who participants are and how they interact with each other and city officials, it is unclear how meetings are facilitated and conducted, like if discussions are made through rounds or stages.
Decision-making
More research is needed when it comes to policies and decisions made by community members in a participatory institution, such as participatory security [4]. Scholars on participatory security have recommended that future research should be directed toward citizen demands of policies that affect safety, policing, and security, and how their demands can be equally distributed in policies or other democratic processes. From what is known in Brazil, Columbia, and Argentina, decisions are made using this method, with an emphasis on community collaboration and input, but the specifics of the decisions are not well reported by these institutions [2][3][4].
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
On paper, the success or failure of a participatory security policy should be measured by how much it promotes citizen equality and democratic involvement. The intended outcomes of participatory security are clear: as a method of democratic participation, participatory security should promote policing institutions that serve the needs of the public and not the whims of government leaders. Relationships and trust should be built between police and citizens, and citizens should feel confident that they will be treated legally and fairly when they are in contact with police. Above all, participatory security should be a method for achieving universalized security and promoting democratic processes. These expected outcomes of participatory security are ideal, which is why many Latin American states chose to institutionalize participatory security in response to rising rates of crime and political corruption.
However, theoretical methods of democratic participation rarely mirror the implementation and practice of those methods, especially in newly democratic nations. A participatory security policy’s success or failure is contingent upon how closely its implementation follows its formal design [5]. As is clear in the above case studies, the effects of actual participatory security policies extend beyond the intended outcome of promoting democratic participation.
Perhaps the most harmful effect of participatory security is that it institutionalizes police control over how citizens access and experience security. Author Yanilda González classifies the police impact on citizenship in terms of the level of security being provided and the distribution of that security across citizens [5]. When security provisions are deficient, the effect is constrained citizenship, which is characterized by “impediments to the practice of the civil, social, and political dimensions of citizenship due to alienation from other citizens and state institutions” [5]. When security is distributed unequally, and some citizens are provided more security than others, the result is stratified citizenship. Stratified citizenship legitimizes existing inequalities, especially along lines of race, class, and geography. According to González, the effect of participatory security on citizenship can be viewed as a negative feedback loop: “Citizenship becomes effectively constrained by deficient protection, while stratification limits the power and ability of marginalized citizens to articulate demands for protection—including protection from state repression—thereby further constraining citizenship for marginalized communities” [5]. Deficient security provisions and unequally distributed security rob citizens of their basic rights to safety and protection from harm.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The influences, effects, and outcomes of participatory security suggest that in its current form, participatory security is not an effective method to promote democratic participation and equality. Universalized security cannot be attained in a state with prominent inequalities, but addressing those inequalities is incredibly difficult for unstable, newly democratic governments. Implementing participatory security promotes the idea of democratic processes, but the inherently flawed design of participatory security prevents citizens from meaningfully accessing those processes. Until participatory institutions can codify citizen decisions and delegate legitimate authority to citizens over state security forces, these issues will persist and may prevent participatory security from being an effective tool for handling security imbalances in a state.
Some scholars have contended that the flaws seen in the execution of participatory security models suggest that participation itself cannot be direct. Anthropologist Kairos Marquardt wrote that democratic participation is “by nature filtered through layers of historical relationships and experiences, and as such it is highly exclusionary” [9]. Some scholars have contended that the structural imbalances in participation mean that participatory security institutions cannot respond to the needs of underserved populations.
Other scholars argue that modifications to the method will enable participatory security to achieve democratic equality. In order to mitigate the influence of corrupt political leaders over the implementation of participatory security policies, citizen power, and autonomy should be legally protected in such policies. Participatory security occurs in settings where there is little trust in police and limited police resources- two conditions that automatically hinder the potential of participatory security mechanisms. In the future, participatory security policies must normalize citizen power over security decisions to improve public opinion of police.
Finally, it is important to note that the existing research into the practice and effects of participatory security is limited. For a more extensive understanding of participatory security and its capacity to achieve democratic goals, case studies and the method itself must be further examined. Most research has been completed regarding participatory security in Latin American countries, but these studies are not representative of every participatory security policy. There are several fascinating examples of citizen security solutions in African and South Asian countries that warrant further research [13] [14].
See Also
References
[1] Elsen, J. R. (2016). Bad Cop, Bad Cop: Corruption in the Buenos Aires Provincial Police - Contemporary Discourse and Suggestions for Future Research. (Master's thesis, Georgetown University). https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1041840/Elsen_georgetown_0076M_13448.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[2] González, Y. (2016). Varieties of Participatory Security: Assessing Community Participation in Policing in Latin America. Public Administration and Development, 36(2), 132-143. https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1752
[3] González, Y., & Mayka, L. (2023). Policing, Democratic Participation, and the Reproduction of Asymmetric Citizenship. American Political Science Review, 117(1), 263-279. doi:10.1017/S0003055422000636
[4] Gonzalez, Y. (2019). Participation as a Safety Valve: Police Reform Through Participatory Security in Latin America. Latin American Politics and Society, 61(2), 68-92. doi:10.1017/lap.2018.78
[5] González, Y. M. (2017). “What citizens can see of the state”: Police and the construction of democratic citizenship in Latin America. Theoretical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617724826
[6] Governo Do Estado, S. P. (n.d.). CONSEG COORDENADORIA ESTADUAL DOS CONSELHOS COMUNITÁRIOS DE SEGURANÇA. SSP/SP - conseg. https://www.ssp.sp.gov.br/conseg/portal/conseg/historia
[7] Hoskin, Gary. (1997). Review: Democratization in Latin America. Latin American Research Review, 32(3), 209-223. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2504007
[8] Law 62 of 1993, Diario Oficial No. 41.004 (Agosto 12, 1993). https://www.funcionpublica.gov.co/eva/gestornormativo/norma.php?i=6943
[9] Marquardt, K. M. (2012). Participatory Security: Citizen Security, Participation, and the Inequities of Citizenship in Urban Peru. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 31(2), 174–189. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/90078/j.1470-9856.2011.00656.x.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[10] Neild, R. (1999). From National Security to Citizen Security: Civil Society and the Evolution of Public Order Debates. Rights and Democracy. https://www.umass.edu/legal/Benavides/Fall2005/397U/Readings%20Legal%20397U/9%20Richard%20Neild.pdf
[11] O'Donnell, G. (1993). On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries (Working Paper No. 192). Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies. https://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/old_files/documents/192_0.pdf
[12] Restrepo, A. (2011). Citizen security: Colombia’s experience. IDB. https://www.iadb.org/en/news/citizen-security-colombias-experience
[13] Auwal, Abdulmalik. (2021). The Routledge Handbook of Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in Africa.
[14] Banerjee, D., & Muggah, R. (2002). Small arms, and human insecurity: Reviewing participatory research in South Asia. Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.