Democracy, citizenship, and police procedure in new orleans: The importance of the local context for defining rights
Book Chapter
Pereira, AW. (2006). Democracy, citizenship, and police procedure in new orleans: The importance of the local context for defining rights
. 127-153. 10.1057/9781403983312_7
Pereira, AW. (2006). Democracy, citizenship, and police procedure in new orleans: The importance of the local context for defining rights
. 127-153. 10.1057/9781403983312_7
In the contemporary world, crime and terrorism raise the specter of chronic low-intensity conflict blurring the dividing line between peace and war in many countries (Davis and Pereira 2003; Mann 2002). Concerns about public security are becoming increasingly important to the organization of national and local politics. Tactical decisions about policing-how and where to deploy the state’s array of coercive forces, military and civilian, how these interact with burgeoning private security agencies and irregular armed forces-have ever larger implications for individual civil, political, social, and human rights, and thus the functioning and quality of democracy (Ungar 2002; Zaverucha 2003). In a democracy, the police play an important role in defining the meaning of rights, because democracies hold out the promise of the rule of law, including a state bound by constitutional constraint, and coercive institutions that respect individuals’ equality before the law and right to fair and transparent procedures in the investigation, adjudication, and punishment of crime. Thus, tactical decisions about policing also raise larger questions about the relationship between the police and other institutions, such as courts, charged with enforcing the rule of law (Carothers 1998; Kant de Lima 1995; Mendez, O’Donnell and Pinheiro 1999; O’Donnell 2000).
