The Public Opinion and Political Behavior Speaker Series brings together leading scholars examining the relationship between democracy, political institutions, and citizen attitudes and behavior in Latin America. Join CIPR for these presentations exploring how political institutions and public opinion shape democratic outcomes across the region.
Speaker: Dorothy Kronick (University of California, Berkeley)
Governments often impose oversight of the police. Proponents argue that oversight curbs bad behavior, while critics counter that it sparks harmful backlash. In her presentation, Dr. Kronick will provide evidence from the staged rollout of a new code of criminal procedure in Colombia, which introduced judicial oversight of arrests. She will show how judicial oversight caused a 40% drop in the number of arrests and a simultaneous improvement in arrest quality. Arrests for low-level crimes like vandalism plummeted, while arrests for serious crimes (like homicide) did not decline. Colombia thus reversed the hemisphere-wide run-up in policing of minor offenses, without police backlash and likely without causing a major crime wave.
