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Violence and Justice in Mexico

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Violence and Justice in Mexico © COPYRIGHT by Jennifer Ann Yelle 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED VIOLENCE AND JUSTICE IN MEXICO: WHY TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS MATTERS BY JENNIFER ANN YELLE ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the role of the judiciary and police force in keeping law and order in a community, specifically in regards to violence reduction. While most studies presume that a focus on institutional performance is the key to optimizing these institutions’ ability to reduce violence, I offer a different approach and show that a focus on trust in the institution is the critical component to violence reduction. I show that historical processes of democratization and liberalization impact the amount of trust a state’s political institutions have; and the resulting trust continues to affect the institutions’ ability to reform and impose a rule-of-law. Drawing from Mexico’s 2,438 municipalities, I quantitatively demonstrate through a zero-inflated negative binomial model that trust in the institution is a driving force behind the institutions’ ability to reduce violence. I compliment the statistical model with three in depth case studies of Oaxaca, Baja California and Mexico State. During field research in these states from 2012 to 2013, I surveyed and interviewed local populations as well as collected many official documents regarding the status of violence and justice in the community. These case studies demonstrate that an institution’s trust is often a legacy of each state’s historical experience with political democratization and economic liberalization. The result is a nation with varying levels of trust in the institution, and thus, varying capabilities to impose a rule-of-law and reduce violence. I argue that thin institutional reform—in an attempt to impose a rule-of-law and reduce violence— has historically failed and will continue to do so unless trust in the institution is first addressed. In the wide expanse of social science research, academics and policy makers often neglect the importance of trust in the institution, perhaps because it does not lend itself easily to analysis, or perhaps because it cannot easily be addressed via public policy. In the course of this analysis, I attempt to convince the reader, quantitatively and qualitatively, that trust matters and is in fact the key-holder to continued democratic development. Table of Contents Introduction: Justice in Mexico ...................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: How Rule-of-law Institutions Work............................................................................ 13 Legal Sanctions as a Disincentive to Criminal Behavior .................................................. 14 Trust as Disincentive to Criminal Behavior...................................................................... 17 Chapter 2: A History of Mexico's Rule-of-law Institutions .......................................................... 22 Police................................................................................................................................. 23 The Judiciary ..................................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 3: Statistical Evaluation of the Rule-of-law Reforms ..................................................... 36 Hypotheses ........................................................................................................................ 36 Research Design................................................................................................................ 40 Modeling the Role of Trust in the institution in Crime Reduction ................................... 44 Chapter 4: The Cases of Mexico State, Oaxaca, and Baja California .......................................... 64 Mexico State ..................................................................................................................... 70 Oaxaca............................................................................................................................... 83 Baja California ................................................................................................................ 100 Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks ................................................................................................. 111 A last word on trade-offs, weakness, and reflections on bias ......................................... 115 Appendix 1: FASP Evaluation .................................................................................................... 120 Appendix 2: Oaxaca survey respondents’ origin ........................................................................ 122 Appendix 3: Mexico State survey respondents’ origin ............................................................... 123 Appendix 4: Baja California survey respondents’ origin ........................................................... 124 Appendix 5: Survey .................................................................................................................... 125 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 130 List of Tables Table 1: Reforms and Average Number of Homicides per Municipalities .................................. 44 Table 2: Series of ZINB models estimating the impact of reform and trust on homicides .......... 53 Table 3: ZINB Model showing the Impact of the Judiciary on the Count of Drug-Related Homicides in Mexico, 2007 -2009................................................................................................ 54 Table 4: Changes in predicted probabilities of homicide given levels of trust in the institution . 58 Table 5: ZINB Model showing the Impact of Police on the Count of Drug-Related Homicides in Mexico, 2007 -2009 ...................................................................................................................... 61 Table 6: Public perceptions of the courts in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State ............ 69 Table 7: Moral Agreement with Judicial Reforms ....................................................................... 88 List of Figures Figure 1: Previous Police Structure .............................................................................................. 25 Figure 2: Post-Reform Structure ................................................................................................... 26 Figure 3: Impunity - Status Quo ................................................................................................... 38 Figure 4:Impunity - Performance .................................................................................................. 38 Figure 5: Impunity - Participation................................................................................................. 38 Figure 6: Impunity - Interaction of Performance and Participation .............................................. 38 Figure 7: Map of Judicial Reform Implementation Status - CCISJP ........................................... 40 Figure 8: Map of Judicial Reform Status - Ingram ....................................................................... 41 Figure 9: Count of Drug-Related Homicides per Municipality, 2010 .......................................... 47 Figure 10: Spectrum of Participation in the Rule-of-Law ............................................................ 65 Figure 11: Trust in the judiciary in Baja California, Oaxaca, and Mexico State .......................... 67 Figure 12: Indicator of Trained Judicial Workers in Proportion to All Judicial Workers, Mexico State .............................................................................................................................................. 75 Figure 13: Salina Cruz Court Performance ................................................................................... 92 Figure 14: Increase of Capacity in the Accusatorial System in Baja California ........................ 104 Introduction: Justice in Mexico "We have to gain ground in the minds of citizens and convince ourselves that justice is the only correct way to build a rule-of-law, as this is not possible with only the will of the authorities. However good the officials are, honest and well-trained, they need the support of a society which is pushing, demanding and making the law a basic element of coexistence" -Alfredo Lagunas Rivera, the Chief Justice of the Oaxacan Supreme Court1 Over 60,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the past decade. The drug- related violence reached record proportions in 2010, increasing to 15,273 people killed.2 This is over a 500 percent increase from 2007 when 2,826 people were killed. Policy makers in Mexico have implemented substantial reforms to their law enforcement institutions as a way to increase the government’s ability to impose a rule-of-law. They have created a federalized police force and mandated one of the largest overhauls of their judiciary in history, changing from an inquisitorial system based on Napoleonic-era laws to a mixed-adversarial system. Adversarial systems, such as that used in the United States, create a more impartial court where the defense and prosecution each plead their case and the court acts as a moderator. In inquisitorial systems, the court is a more active player involved in investigating the facts. The reform to an adversarial system in Mexico introduces oral trials into the
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