TY - JOUR
T1 - The Colombian national police and the politics of crime control evaluations
AU - León, Kenneth Sebastian
N1 - Funding Information: The author would like to thank Jon Gould and Edward Maguire, and the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful feedback on earlier iterations of the manuscript. This study was made possible by the generosity and support of the study’s contributors, and the author is deeply grateful for the local support provided by the Gómez-León, Ricaurte and Troncoso families. This study was funded in part by the Tinker Foundation and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2019
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The Colombian National Police inaugurated a comprehensive operational model in 2010. Informed by evidence-based law enforcement models from the Global North, the MNVCC, or the National Quadrant Policing Model, integrates core features of procedural justice, hotspots, problem-oriented and community policing strategies. Just under a decade old, empirical assessments of the model’s impact vary in quality and availability. While the Colombian National Police presents the model as a successful intervention, there is little consensus on the degree to which the MNVCC has affected crime rates or perceptions of insecurity. The core purpose of this paper is to offer insight into the political factors that enable this contradictory narrative. Relying on privileged access to high-level administrators inside the Colombian National Police and other institutions, this study explains how structural features of official crime data—with political incentives specific to the Colombian context—provide the basis for contradicting claims surrounding the MNVCC’s impact.
AB - The Colombian National Police inaugurated a comprehensive operational model in 2010. Informed by evidence-based law enforcement models from the Global North, the MNVCC, or the National Quadrant Policing Model, integrates core features of procedural justice, hotspots, problem-oriented and community policing strategies. Just under a decade old, empirical assessments of the model’s impact vary in quality and availability. While the Colombian National Police presents the model as a successful intervention, there is little consensus on the degree to which the MNVCC has affected crime rates or perceptions of insecurity. The core purpose of this paper is to offer insight into the political factors that enable this contradictory narrative. Relying on privileged access to high-level administrators inside the Colombian National Police and other institutions, this study explains how structural features of official crime data—with political incentives specific to the Colombian context—provide the basis for contradicting claims surrounding the MNVCC’s impact.
KW - Abstract empiricism
KW - Colombian National Police
KW - Comparative criminal justice
KW - Global South policing
KW - Politics of crime control
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U2 - https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v8i4.1101
DO - https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v8i4.1101
M3 - Article
SN - 2202-7998
VL - 8
SP - 18
EP - 32
JO - International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy
JF - International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy
IS - 4
ER -