HomeNewsAnalysisCan Community Policing Cut Violence in Honduras?
ANALYSIS

Can Community Policing Cut Violence in Honduras?

HONDURAS / 26 SEP 2012 BY EDWARD FOX EN

Community policing programs in Honduras are beginning to show results, with violence rates decreasing in some areas where they have been put in place, though judicial reform will also be necessary to cut the country's high rate of crime.

The Tegucigalpa neighbourhood of La Joya received its first community police unit in September 2011, as El Heraldo reported.

One year on from the inauguration, the project appears to be delivering results. According to a new report by InforSurHoy, crime rates have dropped across the board, and Inspector Sandra Cabrera, who heads the La Joya community police unit, told the news source that the turn-around was immediate. “Last year there were more than 20 armed assaults, three murders and the constant presence of extortionists,” while in 2012 there have been no murders or extortions and only three armed assaults reported, she said.

The results have been replicated in other parts of Tegucigalpa where community police operations have been put in place. In January, a unit began working in the neighbourhood of Flor del Campo, which InfoSurHoy refers to as “one of the most dangerous settlements in the Honduran capital.” Since then, only three homicides have been reported, compared to 32 last year.

The community policing project, which has been in development since 2008 and has support from the Brazilian government, is not confined to the capital. Currently, there are 250 community police officers working with some 50,000 volunteers throughout the country to offer cultural events for communities, organize safety committees and develop drug and gang prevention initiatives, InfoSurHoy states.

Milton Funez, deputy inspector of the Flor del Campo unit, told InfoSurHoy, “By becoming closer to the people we are reversing the bad image the National Police had, and we are also showing our peers we can work for a better country.”

InSight Crime Analysis

Similar community policing initiatives have been implemented in other parts of the region. The most famous of these is Rio de Janeiro’s “pacification” program, launched in 2008, which has seen some of the city’s favelas receive community-focused police pacification units (UPPs). These are meant to install a permanent police presence in areas that have been abandoned by the state, rather than just conducting police raids against gangs operating in the areas. A study funded by the CAF development bank, released in July, found that the UPPs had reduced violence in the neighborhoods where they have been installed.

Guatemala has had a US-funded “model precinct” program in place in parts of the country since 2004, which focuses on preventative policing, and training officers to strengthen their ties with the community. In a recent report, International Crisis Group said that these programs had the potential to improve policing, though it remained to be seen if they could be replicated across the country, or if they would remain what one Guatemalan official called "archipelagos of competence in a sea of corruption." Crisis Group reported that there had been success in the scheme in Mixco municipality which neighbors the capital, though results have been more mixed in Villa Nueva, to the south.

However, despite the early signs of success in Honduras, the community police units must still work in conjunction with the National Police, and indirectly with the judicial system, both of which are notoriously corrupt. Impunity hovers around 90 percent in the country, and some elements in the police force are known to work with criminal gangs.

There is a limit to how much community policing can do to prevent crime, given that Honduras remains a primary transit point for US-bound cocaine and has a strong presence of Central America's "mara" gangs. Efforts to tackle corruption in the police and judiciary must therefore be made a priority, as well as community policing initiatives.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

HOMICIDES / 29 AUG 2022

Police in Guanajuato, Mexico, are accused of being in the pocket of the Jalisco Cartel. But do they have a…

COCAINE / 7 JUL 2022

When brothers Seth and Roberto Paisano Wood were released from prison and returned to their hometown of Brus Laguna, in…

CACHIROS / 21 APR 2022

Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández has been extradited to the United States, drawing to a close a shocking saga…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…