Community policing in Honduras: local impacts of a national programme

Abstract

Among the regions of Latin America, the northern triangle of Central America – comprising the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – is at once the most promising and inhospitable places for community policing. The complete overhauls of these three countries’ security system with the peace accords in the 1990s opened up an unprecedented opportunity to re-structure and re-think the idea of citizen security. Each country had a revamped and civilianised police force supported by international training and a set of accountability agencies. Guatemala, for example, formed a National Human Rights Office, a police Human Rights Office, a Professional Responsibility Office to investigate charges of abuse, and a Disciplinary Regime Section. These countries also underwent thorough judicial reforms, such as by expanding courts and preventive measures geared toward youth at risk. Combined with strong local identities, particularly among indigenous communities in Guatemala, such conditions appeared to give community policing a strong basis for success.

Keywords:

• police
• Honduras
• crime
• gangs

Notes

1. Programa Centroamérica de la Federación Luterana Mundial, Centroamérica 2004–2005: desde una perspectiva de derechos humanos. Crimes covered are homicide and robbery.

2. See The Economist, 18 November 2006, pp. 40–41.

3. Author Interviews, Carlos Chincilla, Executive Director, Community Más Segura (CMS), July 2003, June 2004 and June 2006

4. The percentage of deaths linked to gangs ranges from NGO estimates of 13% to officials’ estimates of about 25%. Source: Interviews with prosecutors, judges and police. See also Reddy (2002), cite polls showing that crime is Hondurans’ main concern and that they supported Maduro's response to it.

5. At least 1600 alleged mareros gang members have been arrested under 332, according to estimates by Centro de Documentation de Honduras (Cedoh).

6. Author Interview Ramón Custodio, National Human Rights Commissioner; Tegucigalpa, 4 July 2005.

7. Author Interview, Sub-Comisionada María Luisa Borjas, ex-UAI Chief; Tegucigalpa, 18 July 2003.

8. Members of the police hierarchy demanded legal action against her for ‘staining and provoking irreparable deterioration of the country's image’ abroad. See Oficiales enfilan ‘batería’ contra Borjas (2003).

9. See Castellanos (2002).

10. See La Prensa (2004).

11. ‘Presidente Maduro inaugura programa “Comunidad Segura” en Choloma, Cortés’, 3 May 2003; Available from: http://www.casapresidencial.hn/seguridad.

12. What constituted such ‘rehabilitation’ was not specified, however. ‘Community Más Segura ha Rehabilitado a 2500 Mareros’.

13. Meeting of the security committee, Choloma, 19 February 2004. About 25 people were in attendance.

14. Author Interview, Reina Grazo, Policía Nacional, CMS chief, La Ceiba, La Ceiba, 25 February 2004.

15. Author Interview, Rolando Carcomo Piura, Comisario, Colonia Kennedy, Tegucigalpa, 28 June 2006.

16. Author Interview, José Luis Muñoz Licona, Sub-Comissioner for the Northern Region, 28 February 2004.

17. While they could not cite raw numbers, they say that three out of every four reports is about domestic violence. Author Interviews, Julián Hernández Reyes, Head of the Chilrden's Office (Dirección Infantil) and Lincoln Pacheco Murillo, head of the Family Unit (Dirección de la Familia), 11 July 2005.

18. Author Interview, Andrés Pavón, President, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH: Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras), Tegucigalpa, 6 August 2003.

19. All 2006–2007 data from Observatorio de la Violencia, Editions 4, 5 and 6, Tegucigalpa: UNAH, 2006–2007.

20. Author Interview, Security Minister Álvaro Romero, Tegucigalpa, 13 June 2006.