On
Project Co-Director Arturo Alvarado Mendoza of the
Centro de Estudios Sociológicos at El Colegio de México explained that
Co-Director Wayne Cornelius of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies would be
unable to attend due to an unforeseen family medical emergency. Project Coordinator David Shirk of the Center
for U.S.-Mexican Studies provided a general overview of the project. Shirk identified the current funding sources
for the project, which has received generous support from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation and the UC MEXUS multi-campus research unit of the
University of California. He also sought
suggestions for completing funding for the project’s website and database development
component ($30,000), language translation ($35,000), research assistance
($20,000), and planning meetings and working and a research conference to be
held in April 2003 ($35,000).
Project Co-Director John
Bailey of Georgetown University concluded the review of the project by
emphasizing its four-part mission: 1) developing better indicators of crime and
public insecurity, 2) analyzing governmental institutions and processes related
to the administration of justice, 3) exploring social participation in the
criminal justice system, and 4) developing practical policy recommendations for
solving public insecurity issues in Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican
borderlands. Bailey emphasized the
importance of understanding reforms to
Arturo Alvarado opened the
discussion by noting the lack of extant data on the characteristics of
individuals involved in criminal behavior, and insufficient critical analysis
of public policies before initiating reforms.
Participants at the meeting noted several areas where the project could
be expanded or improved make an even greater contribution to reforming the
administration of justice in
Sergio Aguayo noted that it
will be necessary to obtain data that will be comparable at the international
level and compatible with other major studies (e.g., United Nations, World
Bank). In particular, such data should
facilitate analysis of
Alfonso Ayala commented that
the proposed research paper on
Finally, echoing points made
at the project’s April planning meeting at UCSD, Mario Arroyo recommended that
the project should pay particular attention to social perceptions of the
problem of crime, and noted the excellent work being done by one of the project
participants – Pablo Parás – in this area.
Legal Institutions and
Processes
A second area of importance for this project is to
analyze and develop recommendations for reforming the legal institutions and
processes involved the administration of justice in
Marcos Pablo Moloeznik noted the value of this
project’s diverse cohort of specialists and interdisciplinary approach to
multiple and complex challenges, but recommended that the project pay more
attention to the issue of “juridical culture.”
The professional expertise and practices of lawyers and judges in the
Despite the diversity of its collaborators,
Margarita Sánchez noted that the project does not currently involve active
Mexican judges, and recommended that their perspective be included. Though some participants questioned the
objectivity of actors so intimately involved in the administration of justice,
others pointed out that it is the inclusion of subjective interpretations from
such actors that will provide greater insight into those perspectives. Moreover, it was agreed that such actors
would add value to the project as commentators and consultants, but would not
necessarily serve as contributing authors for the final volume. In this regard, participants Ernesto López Portillo
and Mario Tellez noted that they had judicial contacts in the Instituto de
Juridicatura Federal and the State of
A number of other observations were made with regard
to the role of institutions. For
example, Ernesto López Portillo noted the need to pay more attention to the
integration of public safety and the penal process. Hugo Pérez raised questions about the problem
of political abuse in sentencing and the need to create legal measures to
prevent this. Margarita Sánchez emphasized
that the federal and local levels of jurisdiction are intimately linked, and
that their interaction merit significant attention in this project. Concluding this discussion, Samuel del Villar noted that in all areas the legal institutional
bases of law enforcement and the administration of justice need to be
considered.
Social Participation in
With regard to social
participation in the administration of justice, several participants raised the
issue of oversight as critical to social participation in the administration of
justice. Diego Valadés Rios, Director of
UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, noted the importance of external
oversight mechanisms to ensure accountability, and proposed that the project
should devote some attention to the issue of Congressional oversight of law
enforcement organizations, which has been blocked since the 1977 “reforma
política” in
Similarly, Rob Varenik of
the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights recommended that in the proposed
research on the subject of social participation and non-governmental oversight
greater attention should be given to the issue of accountability, since
oversight and accountability need to go hand-in-hand. Varenik also later noted the need for
attention to both internal and external mechanisms for police oversight at the
state and local levels as well, given the fact that the missions of human
rights commissions in Mexico are often broadly defined to include this and many
other functions.
Marcos Pablo Moloeznik also pointed to the
importance of
Finally, with regard to the issue of human rights
and advocacy groups, Arturo Yáñez stressed the importance of learning from the
experiences of other Latin American countries, noting particularly the case of
Policy Recommendations for
Robert Varenik stressed that
information is perhaps the most important component of generating change in
Marcelo Bergman raised his concerns that – given its
emphasis of formal institutions and policies – the project may short-changing attention to social causation. In other words, he sees this project
addressing the question of “what to do about crime and public insecurity”
without paying sufficient attention to the phenomena in question. While this focus on solutions has been the
trend of other research on the subject of crime and insecurity in
Ernesto López Portillo
Vargas raised concerns about the feasibility of the project’s current
timeframe. In particular, he noted the
difficulty of obtaining information and providing proper diagnosis in time for
the November conference scheduled for the project. However, these concerns were alleviated when
Shirk explained that the papers presented at both conferences would be
preliminary drafts and could be reworked over subsequent months, before their
submission as formal papers in 2003.
López Portillo Vargas’ concerns about time
constraints elicited an important discussion about the project’s role in
facilitating access to information.
In terms of organization and collaboration, Mario
Arrollo offered four valuable, concrete recommendations: 1) that the project
should develop a database of persons and institutions that are part of the
project and also those who are generally relevant to Mexico’s criminal justice
system, 2) that the project should develop an inventory of publications and
resources that have been produced by project participants, 3) the project
should facilitate working groups on the diverse subjects under study, and 4)
the project directors should use interdisciplinary criteria for deciding the
ultimate content of the project’s final volume, and perhaps establish a
separate committee to review the quality of works to be included and to ensure
that the main themes are addressed consistently.
The meeting turned to
prospects for facilitating institutional collaboration in the collection and
sharing of data relating to the administration of justice in
Marcelo Bergman of the
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas described a major survey project
underway at his institution with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. This survey will analyze responses from 1,600
prison inmates from around Mexico to explore four main topics: 1) the personal
profiles of convicted criminals (e.g., family history, socioeconomic class,
etc.), 2) the criminal records and unreported criminal practices of these
individuals (e.g., modes of operation), 3) the sentencing processes that
brought about their convictions, and 4) the prison conditions experienced by
the inmates. Bergman explained that
these data will be available on the Internet starting in September 2002, and
proposed that the project construct a link between its website and his survey
data base.
Hugo Concha of the Instituto de Investigación
Jurídica at the UNAM described the major themes of a series of empirical
studies that he and his colleagues have produced. Specifically, the IIJ is analyzing: 1)
judicial reform (both local and federal), 2) the development of
Pablo Parás discussed the
significant challenges involved in the collection and processing of information
for this project, and recommended that, rather than develop new data or format, the project should focus on utilizing and directing
attention to extant databases. Parás
suggested that this project could make a tremendous contribution (and save
considerable space) by providing a CD-ROM with the final published volume. He also noted that, in coordination with the
ICESI, Este País is already working
on collecting such data and could serve as a coordinator for the collection of
data for the project. Finally, Parás
noted that because
René Jiménez of the
Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios Sobre la Inseguridad explained the
institution’s functioning as a civilian organization designed to evaluate
public security issues, with support from COMPARMEX, ITESM, UNAM, and Este País. He noted that the ICESI has just conducted a
survey on insecurity that covers both victimization and perceptions of the
justice system. This survey included
over 5,000 families nationwide. ICESI’s
intent is to repeat this study at regular intervals (e.g. every 6 months) to
determine the tendencies over the long term.
ICESI’s reported database results from this survey focused primarily on
the national level but included some state level data as well. They are now assessing prospects for
extending coverage of the state level.
By the end of the summer, they hope to have complete data on the entire
nation and for all states. The ICESI is
open to recommendations for improvement of their databases (e.g., they are now
working with Mitofsky and others to improve their data collection
methods). The ICESI is especially
interested in developing geographic information systems analysis to evaluate
patterns of crime. Jiménez invited any
participants of the project to contact ICESI and request more data.
Arturo Yáñez explained that the program he is
currently coordinating is very interested in collaborating with this project to
make available information, web links, and other resources. They are currently working on three different
themes: 1) insecurity and criminality in the Valle de México, 2) insecurity and
criminality in
Finally, Robert Varenik of the Lawyer’s Committee on
Human Rights explained that his organization has studied the issue of
preventing human rights violations in
Arturo Alvarado, Pablo Piccato, and Elisa Speckman
outlined the plans for the project’s database.
Piccato noted that very little consistent data exist, particularly over
a longer historical span, which severely limits possibilities for analysis of
larger trends of criminality and the criminal justice system. The idea of the proposed database is to bring
this information together in order to situate historically the trends of the
last 20 years. The database will be a tool for multiple uses of among the
project’s collaborators, and the basic idea is to gather the information that
already exists for the national level and for the states. In the first phase, Piccato explained, those
participating in the construction of the database would help to gather
information. The second phase will establish the categories needed to refine
the database and synthesize multiple categories and indicators that have
existed over time, and to make these compatible with standard international
categories.
Elisa Speckman noted that
there are a number of different ways to proceed. One idea is to bring together different
existing databases and utilize them on their own terms. Another, more ambitious approach is to
assemble a long time series of data going back to the 18th
century. This second approach is fraught
with challenges because there are numerous problems with the collection of
data, given the different categories that exist. However, the benefits will be considerable: a
more reliable data set that includes a larger number of observations and
variables (e.g. gender, etc.) to allow for more rigorous analysis. To limit costs, the plan is to work solely
from published data of formal government sources and other organizations.
Many participants were
skeptical about the prospects for the construction of such a database. In particular, the issue of constructing an
historical database raised many questions.
Several questioned the relevance of data from the 19th and
early 20th Century to contemporary justice issues, as well as the
reliance on official statistics, which often contain major inaccuracies. For
example, Ernesto Ortega pointed out that the longitudinal study will certainly
be helpful for identifying longer-term tendencies, but the project needs to
develop a realistic time frame for analysis.
What is the most appropriate cut-off date? Mario Arroyo argued that historical data
series are hugely problematic and strongly recommended that the data series
should focus on the period from 1980 to the present.[3]
The debate over the database thus became centered on
divisions over the relevance of historical data to
Ernesto Ortega pointed out that many such indicators
are readily available, including those produced by Luis de la Barreda’s Human
Rights Commission in
In the end, this discussion
centered on two fundamental questions:
How much historical perspective is necessary for this project? To what extent can the project maximize
resources by facilitating the collection and distribution of existing
data? The discussion concluded with
efforts to find compromise on both questions and ensure interdisciplinary
tolerance. In the end, there was general
agreement that the amount and accessibility of contemporary data are greater
(and possibly less labor-intensive) than historical data. Thus, it makes sense for the project to
proceed with the building of a database on two fronts: 1) coordination of
existing contemporary datasets, and 2) expansion of these data through the
collection and analysis of historical data.
The final session was devoted to the division of
labor among project participants for the production of working papers for
possible inclusion in the book to result from the project. The project coordinator explained that preliminary
drafts of the working papers would be presented at two conferences over the
course of the coming academic year.
These conferences are tentatively scheduled for November 2002 and May
2003, the first one dealing with the analysis of crime and legal institutions,
and the second focused on social participation and policy recommendations.
Each participant at the meeting described the
research that he or she planned to conduct as part of this project; the
research topics are listed below. Because many participants were not in
attendance, this preliminary list does not include all of the themes or
titles that will be addressed for this project:
1.
“The Historical, Legal and Social Construction of Criminality in
2.
“Historical Patterns and Indicators of Crime in
3.
“Organized Crime and Narcotrafficking in
4.
“Case Study: Crime in
5.
“Police and Policing in
6.
“The Military and the PGR in
7.
“Lawyers and Judges in the Administration of Justice in
8.
“Punishment and Rehabilitation in the Mexican Criminal Justice System”
(Bergman)
9.
“Social Participation in 19th Century Penal Legislation”
(Speckman)
10.
“Measuring Public Evaluations of Crime and Criminal Justice in
11.
“Criminal Prosecution and the Role of Victims in
12.
“Access to Information in
13.
“Assessing Decentralization:
What Role for Municipal Government in the Administration of Justice?” (Rowland)
14.
“Judicial Reform and Criminal Justice in
15.
“Improving Protections for Human Rights through Legal Reform” (Varenik)
16.
“Prison Reform in
17.
“Border Crime and Cross-Border Collaboration” (Shirk, Ramos)
18.
“Non-Governmental Organizations and Oversight” (de la Barreda, Jiménez)
Sergio Aguayo, El Colegio de
México
Arturo Alvarado, El Colegio
de México (Centro de Estudios Sociológicos)
Mario Arroyo Juárez, UNAM
(Centro Internacional de Estudios Sobre la Seguridad)
Sigrid Arzt,
Alfonso Ayala, Consejo
Estatal de Coordinación
John Bailey,
Martín G. Barrón Cruz,
Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Penales
Luis de la Barreda
Solórzano, Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios Sobre la Inseguridad
Marcelo Bergman, Centro de
Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Samuel del
Villar, El Colegio de México
Hugo Concha Cantú, UNAM
(Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas)
Jorge Chabat, Centro de
Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Jesse
Miriam
C.R. Hibbs, William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation
René Jiménez, Instituto
Ciudadano de Estudios Sobre la Inseguridad
Ernesto López Portillo
Vargas,
Laura Olivia Martinez,
Marcos Pablo Moloeznik,
Universidad de Guadalajara
Ernesto Ortega,
Pablo Parás, Centro de
Estudios de Opinión Pública
Hugo Pérez,
Pablo Piccato,
Jorge Robelledo-Flores,
Secretaría de Seguridad Pública
Allison Rowland, Centro de
Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Margarita Sánchez Reyes,
Secretaría de Seguridad Pública
David Shirk, UCSD (Center
for U.S.-Mexican Studies)
Carlos Silva, El Colegio de
México (Centro de Estudios Sociológicos)
Elisa Speckman, UNAM
(Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas)
Mario Tellez, Archivo
Judicial
Diego Valadés, UNAM
(Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas)
Robert Varenik, Lawyer's
Commission for Human Rights
José Arturo Yáñez R., El
Colegio Mexiquense
[1] Marcelo Bergman also later recommended that, as part of the project’s attention to these overarching goals, participants should consider the issues of corruption and public trust in each subject area.
[2] Shirk
made note, for example, of the survey of corporate executives conducted
annually by the Mexico Weekly Fax Bulletin (www.orbispublications.com), and
recommended that this could be a useful source of information about private
sector perspectives on public insecurity in
[3] Arroyo
pointed out that no significant data exist on drug trafficking in
[4] These three will author separate papers related to different aspects of
police and policing in