Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Prof. Yanilda María González (Harvard Kennedy School of Government) will talk about her research on race, policing and democratization in Latin America.
Prof. González's newbook, Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America (Cambridge University Press), studies the persistence of police forces as authoritarian enclaves in otherwise democratic states (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia), demonstrating how ordinary democratic politics in unequal societies can both reproduce authoritarian policing and bring about rare moments of expansive reforms.
This event is part of Critical Perspectives on Justice and Inequality, a new series on criminological and sociolegal dimensions of anti-Black racism, Indigenous peoples, and settler colonialism.
Yanilda María González is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research focuses on policing, state violence, and citizenship in democracy, examining how race, class, and other forms of inequality shape these processes. González’s new book, Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America (Cambridge University Press), studies the persistence of police forces as authoritarian enclaves in otherwise democratic states, demonstrating how ordinary democratic politics in unequal societies can both reproduce authoritarian policing and bring about rare moments of expansive reforms. She received my PhD in Politics and Social Policy from Princeton University. Prior to joining HKS González was an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. She previously worked at a number of human rights organizations in the US and Argentina, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, ANDHES, and Equipo Latinoaméricano de Justicia y Género.