A program of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). CDDRL is a research center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Effective Law Enforcement Institutions and Democratic Accountability: Workshop Focuses on Regional Issues in Law Enforcement
The Stanford Program on Poverty and Governance delivered its five-day training course, “Effective Law Enforcement Institutions and Democratic Accountability,” to law enforcement professionals from the Planning Unit of the Mexican Comision Nacional de Seguridad (CNS). Held in Encina Hall October 11-15, 2016, the workshop was led by Professors Beatriz Magaloni and Alberto Diaz-Cayeros as part of their U.S. State Department-funded research project on police accountability and citizen trust in Mexico. Stanford political scientists and legal scholars participated in the week-long workshop to address a wide range of topics focused on the dynamics between criminal violence, police practices and citizen trust. Highlights of the unique curriculum included:
The Mexican delegation took afiled trip to the Stockton Police Department to meet with Chief of Police Eric Jones, an innovator in effective community policing and use of body-worn cameras. They also a visited Stanford's new David Rumsey Map Center, where scholars can work with digital mapping software to manipulate, enlarge, quantify, aggregate, and visualize geo-data in unique ways for research.
The final session of the workshop focused on developing collaborative approaches between scholars and law enforcement practitioners in Mexico on a CNS-sponsored "risk terrain" project currently underway in Acapulco, with an analysis of police patrolling data, the role of schools in mitigating risk for youth violence and gang activity, and the design of federal police surveys.
The workshop and site visits were instrumental in advancing key goals of U.S. State Department-funded research project on project police accountability and citizen trust, which include assessing the efficacy of new law enforcement approaches in coordinating policing between federal, states and municipal agencies, mapping criminal activity and drug trafficking routes in Mexico, and correlating socio-economic characteristics with levels of trust among Mexican citizens.