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ABSTRACT
Mohar
INTRODUCTION
During the last decade, Mexico has demonstrated remarkable achievements in the
development of its political system. Yet its
incipient democracy is at great risk due to
the lack of substantial progress in an essential matter: justice and police reform. Corruption, abuse of power, misuse of force,
human rights violations, are all still common practice within police agencies in the
country, as has been extensively documented by the media. All this has been
aggravated in recent years, after a very violent outbreak of organised crime mostly
drug trafficking related which has shown
the incapability of, and the extent of the
corruption within, these institutions.
Generally speaking, police agencies in
Mexico have deep structural and technical
deficiencies. Achieving high international
democratic police standards is a huge challenge when they still struggling with basic
management matters. There is an obvious
need for governments at all levels to
increase their investment in police and
crime prevention policy, but not everything
is about money. The last 10 years investment may have had some positive impact,
particularly on the largest agencies. Nevertheless, it is easy to infer that lots of
resources have been wasted and little progress achieved because of the lack of longterm policy, strategic objectives and sound
evaluation. This is unacceptable in a country with so many needs and budgetary
constrictions, and in a country that cannot
stand weak police institutions for too long
without putting its new democracy at risk.
Having enhanced police services requires
clear direction and means to measure progress. This is exactly what the evaluation
The federal constitution states that government agencies at different jurisdictions and
levels of government must work together in
order to address public safety issues and
concerns effectively. That is the reason
behind the federal constitutions call to all
public safety and criminal justice agencies
to coordinate their work under a National
Public Safety System (SNSP).
The National Public Safety Council
(CNSP) is the steering body of the system.
It is composed of the 31 State governors,
the federal districts head of government,
and federal Ministers concerned with public safety. Every year, the CNSP approves
the formula for the distribution of the
public safety federal fund or grant (FASP),
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Queretaro does not have a history of political or social demand for reforming police
services. Nonetheless, in order to comply
with its mandate, the new SSC came up
with a comprehensive agenda that included
developing a police service that is reliable,
respectful of human rights, public-oriented
and accountable. Although the main target
of the reform process was POES, directly
under State jurisdiction, the plan also
sought to extend the reform efforts to every
municipal agency, even though the State
did not have legal powers over them. The
rationale for focus on municipal police
agencies was simple: the majority of policecitizen contacts occur with municipal
police officers. They outnumber State
Police officers by almost three to one and
the nature of their work requires greater
interaction with the public.
Municipal police agencies are held
accountable by the mayor and the municipal council, but the State executive branch
has very limited powers over them. That
made the challenge considerable: how to
enhance the professionalism of 19 primitive
and autonomous municipal police agencies?
It is this process reform and professionalism of municipal police agencies in
Queretaro and how policing indicators promoted that process that forms the focus
of the remainder of this paper.
To reform municipal services, the SSC
set up a programme named Evaluation
Model (EM). The reason for using the word
model instead of programme was that the
latter term is usually associated with something that ends after each election. The
nomenclature reflected SSCs belief that
organisational change would be a lengthy
process.
The objectives
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regardless of the final result of the evaluation. Otherwise, they might delay their
investment and eventually substitute it with
the EM funds, or not invest at all in their
police service. The additional funds received
through the programme could then be used
for increased investment in strategic areas
for improvement, rather than to pay for
basic equipment or uniforms. Also, agencies
had to be up to date with all the legal
requirements,
especially
those
that
17
demanded cooperation with SSC. Additionally, they should have complied with all
standards classified as minimum for the first
year18 that would increase on a yearly basis.
Finally they had to observe all of the programmes deadlines and procedures.
Both the set of minimum standards for
the first year and the prize fund were
created to respond to the concerns about
the ability of police agencies to meet all
standards at once. There was a great risk of
losing municipalities interest in the programme if no agency would have met the
criteria for programme rewards. Instead,
having a smaller goal would make it easier
for the agencies to achieve results and maintain political support. This design also
helped compensate for the great differences
among agencies. The more developed ones
would be competing for the additional
resources, while the rest would be progressing regardless of their notable disadvantages,
while having access to the general grant.
The legal agreement also stipulated that
the commission and the SSC would only
make public those agencies that met the
minimum standards and those that did not,
as well as the three agencies obtaining the
most points. No specific amount of points
awarded to every single municipality would
be publicised.
(f) The technical assistance office
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