No. 17 (9): Challenges of police training in democracy. July-December 2018

If we looked back, we could refresh our memory of the most illustrative moments of the journey in which police institutions in Latin America and other regions of the world acquired the undeniable status of a public problem under the constant scrutiny of the media’s magnifying glass. Such an exercise would place us in a scenario of corruption issues (including the payment of “cuts” to police chiefs, extortion, kidnappings, homicide and organized crime), inefficiency to prevent and manage crime, the inexistence of preventive social intelligence processes to anticipate situations that generate conditions of violence and ungovernability, or the historical, concealed and illegal links with politicians that have given meaning to what some scholars have called the political misgovernance of security. In order to revert this situation, we must promote profound, comprehensive and sustained police reform processes. Despite the natural resistance that any change entails, these organizations entrusted to maintain order and enforce the law are now facing the complex challenge of participating in an ongoing process of reinventing themselves in order to achieve the effectiveness demanded of them by society, making deep changes in the structures and mentalities within their ranks, and repositioning the figure of the police officer in a society that is ever more disenchanted with their functions and results; that is, transforming and modernizing the social mission of the police so that the important role they play in democratic governability can be recognized.

One of the most pressing issues in police reform is the urgent training and professionalization of the police. The lack of professionalization of the police contributes to the sedimentation of arbitrary, inefficient and ignorant forms of legality both in the use of force and in the performance of the tasks assigned to each police force. The widespread idea that the police must be professional is widely acknowledged, although its meaning is still unclear and incomplete. In this respect, this issue of Diálogos sobre educación inquires into how the police is educated in democracy, who can legitimately provide this education, what is the source of this legitimacy and the knowledge to be acquired in the education and professionalization of a police officer in democracy, how these processes are taking place, and to what extent they are congruent with the actual routine tasks of a police officer working in multiple and complex contexts. We seek to promote a critical reflection and discussion on the education, education systems and training of the police, as well as their capacity to work as a vehicle for the induction of criteria, scientific knowledge and techniques aimed at meeting the norms and expectations demanded by democracy. In turn, this debate seeks to generate proposals aimed at adopting new perspectives that trace a direct relationship between the democratic quality of education, the professionalization of the police, and the democratic quality of the decisions made by the police officer in his or her everyday work.

Issue coordinator: María Eugenia Suárez de Garay