Peru: Citizen Councils for Police Accountability
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Peru: Police Accountability through Local Citizen Security Councils
Background
With relative peace returning to Peru in the late 1990s after 20 years of brutal internal conflict costing 70,000 lives, the country has recently been undergoing a critical transition to democracy. Key elements of demilitarization include the reinstatement of civilian control over the security forces, reform of the judiciary, and a major police reform initiative, designed and guided by well-known human rights leaders. The Justice Initiative is engaging in this reform process in order to help maximize the potential to achieve accountable policing in a secure environment protective of rights.
The Peruvian National Police (PNP) are deeply scarred by long-term counter-terrorism activities throughout years of civil unrest, as well as by prolonged and pervasive government corruption. The conflict traumatized and militarized the police, and distanced them from local communities. Under President Fujimori’s watch from 1990 to 2000, corrupt practices penetrated all aspects of government, including law enforcement, and left police coffers empty. Together with this troubled history, the continued need for fiscal austerity across all government sectors has imposed constraints on the institutional reform of the PNP. Progress has been patchy.
A turning-point came in February 2003 with the creation by the Peruvian parliament of a new National Citizen Security System (SINASEC), coordinated by a National Citizen Security Council (Consejo Nacional de Seguridad Ciudadana—CONASEC). SINASEC aims to promote local, participative crime prevention initiatives and make police more responsive to communities, through a combination of top-down and bottom-up structures for police accountability to civilian authorities. The new system relies on “local citizen security councils” (consejos distritales de seguridad ciudadana—CDSC), where local police commanders work directly with local authorities and community representatives on crime and law and order. In addition to local councils, SINASEC also creates provincial and regional committees.
The CDSCs, bottom-up mechanisms to hold police accountable for their conduct and service quality, offer an important opening for community participation in local security issues. They are mandated to design a “local citizen security plan” on the basis of a diagnosis of local safety and security issues. The security plan is to be implemented by mobilizing local cooperation and resources. The CDSCs are also charged with evaluating the plan’s impact and monitoring the performance of public employees implementing the plan, including police.
Objectives
Experience in other settings, for example South Africa’s community policing forums, indicates that to function effectively, mechanisms like the CDSCs need support and capacity, particularly in their oversight roles. Absent technical expertise in conducting diagnostics and evaluations, and access to model strategies for social crime prevention, CDSCs risk atrophying into purely formal entities without effective oversight or influence. They may even pose a danger for human rights protection, should political factions seek to control and exploit them or should they become vehicles for local conflict or for discrimination against marginal sectors of society.
In September 2003, the Justice Initiative launched a project to pilot best practices in six areas in Peru, working with committees at the district, provincial and regional levels, and in close cooperation with CONASEC. The project’s objectives are to:
- Educate civil society organizations on citizen security issues, and reinforce their ability to support both local policing accountability and crime prevention efforts;
- By providing technical expertise and developing good practices that may be replicated more broadly in the country, build capacity among local authorities, police stations and community groups to work effectively and sustainably within the CDSCs in six pilot areas;
- Build capacity in CONASEC and the police to implement and sustain the new national citizen security system;
- Evaluate pilot projects to identify lessons learned and best practices that will support ongoing work and improvements in the citizen security system.
Activities
The Justice Initiative has been engaged in the decentralization and democratization of public security policy making in Peru from its inception. As the process goes forward we will seek to:
- Assist the establishment of the CDSC system, with intensive support for district, provincial and regional committees in six pilot areas;
- Develop methodologies for the different elements of the committees’ mandate—conducting security diagnostics, complaints procedures, impact and personnel evaluation;
- Provide access to specialized crime prevention techniques, tried and tested elsewhere, for the CDSCs, the police, and CONASEC.
- Identify lessons and establish best practices in accountable policing; and
- Monitor and prevent potentially negative outcomes for human rights protection.
Partners
IDL / Instituto de Defensa Legal
CENPROSS /Centro de Promoción Social para la Seguridad Ciudadana
National Citizen Security Council (CONASEC)
Ministry of the Interior
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP)