Transcript

Russ Altman (00:03 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/hvRRv-8ggN94j6uHiz95JFVWFECw178HiDYQBWjUINRDKbdbnCVXMYNT69yi_E0AcPYWfL1nUEz-gY3t8TuXc-7fZ_I?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=3.78)): This is Stanford Engineering, the Future of Everything. And I'm your host, Russ Altman. Today, Professor Beatriz Magaloni will tell us how poverty, violence, and governance are intimately related and how they intersect very commonly and how police behave. Focusing on Latin America, she will tell us that sometimes complex problems don't yield simple solutions. It's the future of poverty, violence, and governance. Well, Beatriz Magaloni is a professor of political science at Stanford University. And she studies poverty, violence and governance, especially in Latin America. She works in the field with governments to test interventions in the hopes of improving the life of those who live in poverty and who are subjected to violence. So Beatriz, I know that one of the places that all of these topics come together is in police.

(00:57 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/qreZ0dWwsiPkWIref3gu5QY30boMRCKzQW7mqX4SBnQxzzllAw8q5djML9PVaTKBm1aoZLpa09q_qY2_VUfQREWjpwM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=57.12)): They're agents of the government, they enforce policy, they deal with the poor and unfortunately, they're always involved in violence in some way or another. But many people might not be familiar with how police work in Mexico and Brazil and the other countries that you study. So can you give us an overview of how this all comes together and what is the role of the police in places like Rio de Janeiro that you study?

Beatriz Magaloni  (01:18 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/EABt7YwOABQiFAd0Exeq9RexAa79KW6mXsSWP7M_AoeDIfb3xDFvQvOdvsibVi05B9YG9ybyLFKHX_TbNYprkHccGmY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=78.06)): Okay, so I will begin by explaining the differences between Rio de Janeiro and the US. And then I also want to go and tell you a little bit about Mexico. So in terms of police violence, we worry a lot about that in the US. So we have some statistics that say around 1000 people get killed by the police every year here. Of those 1000, obviously not all of the police killings are abusive or violating the law. So we don't know exactly the percentage of those which are really abusive and unlawful. Now, we go to Brazil and we say only in the state of Rio de Janeiro which is the state that I study, more or less 1,300 people get killed every year. That means around six people every year in the worst years that I've been studying there. So if you extrapolate this to the entire population of the United States, it would be similar to having 60,000 people killed in the US every year.

Russ Altman (02:26 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/q8uBtrlbbgBuURbEF4gK4J15cy1hsvaFkwbScNbjqnPqd1BLPVwFifNW67vibRst6eeTmFkB2IMZlOxf3iK86ZBnRdQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=146.85)): Which is similar to the number of car accidents each year and many other very big public issues.

Beatriz Magaloni  (02:33 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/TQlBGtyLCrWsg9nMwxXKGgewPWPoDAaMLtvmRAOkZls7ozpn6Zgx0Bkpdqm7I81K73XV4GtTqCMBJQ4KqvJYhPA0bAE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=153.75)): Exactly. Like heroin overdose, I don't recall right now the exact number, but it's really massive. 20% of the homicides in Rio are caused by the police. So we hear also that police enters favelas, we know they enter favelas with armored vehicles. They enter favelas with operatives, with machine guns, and they actually shoot indiscriminately. So the type of situation, if you are poor living in a favela you always experience the police as an agent of oppression, as an agent that invades your community, that comes with violence. And there has been many instances in which, for example, a police officer gets killed and then they go back to the favela and take revenge and then indiscriminately kill. There have been many cases, 25 people here, eight people there. So it's a very violent place. Studying there made me feel like I was in a war zone, in between two parts of a war that really don't talk to each other. It's very hard for them to reconcile because of the long experience.

Russ Altman (03:52 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/G5lDP9ySfhg9pBsuA8E9Qve4y35nOk71vLWaHfLIyKOjC_ovRt2uFLcnyvNXQkgsCcNRyfttaO1GUH9VJs949O08rho?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=232.26)): So let me ask though, I have to stop because this is so shocking, obviously the people who are poor living in the favelas are well aware of this. What does the rest of the population think about these outcomes? Is it suppressed and they don't hear about it or do they know about it and for some reason it's okay? How is it processed by others in the society?

Beatriz Magaloni  (04:14 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/JU2hWbJTArGQtaIDkYKlT6EQr_RldmW2NW874MliQGW2Xn7vFUiWntp0_vHmX2tn7uuKnOvyXMgdR2jjkvGtQ4FMWlo?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=254.58)): This is a great question, Russ. So unfortunately, Brazil is a very unequal country, unequal both in terms of race, polarized but also income. And people who live outside of the favelas, wealthier people have very offensive opinions often of people who live inside the favelas. They sort of regard them as criminals or associated with criminals. And there are servers that ask this question, which is a very common phrase in Brazil that says bandido morto, which means a good criminal is a dead criminal. And then you ask whether you agree with this phrase or not. And in the urban centers around 55% of Brazilians agree with this phrase, which is another way of saying we justify police vigilantism. Yeah, when it's about these favelados, okay, we don't care if the police is violent. And there is another phrase that is, human rights are for humans and the same percentage agree on those issues.

(05:22 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/00UqBvXfhflZ3_lhZDr_Ht5W-jI_o8ntHsgrUPDXGQxoPAEDVKUsggPHKuAmLb5148C7d5w-fi2Z9C8Xz96i5mDkiLM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=322.92)): But interestingly, when the police started to target white middle-class individuals which was around some protests when the state raised prices of transportation, I was there in Brazil during that time and police became very violent against protesters. They were starting to use rubber bullets and really causing death and injury. And that's when protests against police violence became really more generalized. But there have been years when these things happen in the favelas and there is very little attention on the part of the general population because of this division. Rio it's called Cidade Partida, which means divided city. And you literally see there are two types of cities, two categories of citizenship and they're incredibly disintegrated.

Russ Altman (06:23 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/1Eu3MNBVwOurxtdGiIhYUjtv-ufIf4A1OSfSagKaB0P9XYyTubJhQ8IjKUyNw518w8ZoQKTGYVYHjBb2nCQxwTb9MCk?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=383.82)): So that is very helpful. And I know getting back to your work, one of the projects you have is called Police Professionalization. So it sounds like you're trying to make inroads to the approach and the psyche of the police that are in training and that are deployed. Can you tell me about that work?

Beatriz Magaloni  (06:44 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/9niP0f4gZgn24T89dnYSdek7KHXBg_pNJaIJfextEc9-YK7ZwkobJtCdPlKpHVXxi8CsigLAhioYLSMZsiT207s-CFM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=404.58)): Yeah, the work was very productive for many years until the elections that brought to power right-wing politicians, both in Rio and in Brazil. So Bolsonaro and Wilson in Rio. Until that happened, we were working quite cooperatively with the police and say they were a series of commanders and officers who were really interested in controlling police violence, and they knew we were there. We were like a task force to control police violence. So one of the things we were able to do was to construct a data set that officers at the top would be able to consult to see how much violence police are using on the street. Paradoxically, this is a corporation of more than 40,000 officers, and at the top it's very hard to know what is happening on the streets. So one of the things that we realized is they have no information of who is doing what.

(07:45 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/nmBiszU1E180-xq2ii8-3MfG0FfeN11ZudHolmlUkqIWD_rK5mWkOBIiQzCMssaJ-gsgEm0XkIdBUnsEeNptRgNzsK0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=465.87)): So the police share with us ammunition data, so how much bullets literally police consume every day. So I told them, "I don't want to know the names." And please, I made them clear I don't have names, I just have numbers because I had to present this before 300 commanders and tell them, "Listen, in this battalion these officers, they should not be working here. They should not be police officers." So out of that presentation and also in collaboration with a Brazilian scholar, Ignacio Cano, they removed some of these officers, 20 of these officers from the street and started a retraining program that we were evaluating. So the five most valiant battalions were going to be selected into this, and we began randomly selecting these so that we could really evaluate with a control group and a treatment group. But unfortunately, the turn to the right happened and this didn't really come to full term. We also introduced body cameras, and we did a full randomized evaluation for a year there in one of the largest favelas, Rocinha.

(09:03 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/1XsIOled18GCkVVypIfQgZol446I-XQHB3P-Z9ne6Auh3CUNmZqn7OVEueo2E-P9NZEsNPjtGcZxyB3jeIc_YKpzn60?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=543.9)): And the findings are fascinating. We had around 100 cameras that we assign every day randomly according to shifts. And we were able to measure how police officers changed their behavior when they were in a camera. And this is very telling of how results that take place here in the US of similar studies are very different once you go to places such as Rio or Mexico. And just to summarize the results quickly, we find a very paradoxical result which is that police on the one hand resisted very much turning on their cameras. And we knew that was going to happen because for many reasons, including the fact that one of the commanders told us literally, if you put cameras to our offices they would stop doing their jobs. The commander knew this. So with the cameras, they cannot do what they regularly do.

(10:03 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ckTgTnbs5EGI99mf-xCC0co0xlSQPFMAQ36i1X7NxEpTTG27vBlXWpLOXpuSeEDleoeaj74O9JAnpKP77MCoKt5rpp8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=603.54)): They're not going to do their jobs. So they refused to turn their cameras on and we asked them to follow two protocols randomly. One of them was to have a camera on all the time, so to remove from the officer the possibility of just deciding not to record. At the middle of the study, there was a rebellion among police officers. We had to stop that protocol. Well, to make the story short, we found that using the cameras even when the police didn't turn them on, there was a really massive change in police behavior. They stopped doing abusive stop and searches, and that also had an implication of how community treated them. We have surveys from the police in which we ask how community relates to them. And we hear things well, they throw urine to us, they throw stones, they throw water, they physically attack us.

(11:01 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/7WydjrCNOcIP0gexsJJbbmB7Q-cEuEmmRWr4kXXUGm4ARkzzb948Vi5qKtBtp3snQ0WKoHRB80MbR5WMbFC7Fxxvxps?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=661.32)): So both of these during the study reduced significantly despite the fact that there was this disobedience of the protocol and that many officers didn't record. Unfortunately, when we inquire into which officers are recording and which officers are not, we find that the officers who have been engaged in more violence in the past are the ones who don't record their interactions. So that suggests that the technology has limitations, serious limitations because of this sort of who can turn it on and or off. But there is now a technology which you can actually turn the cameras on from the police station. So if you have really the full support of let's say the local commander, you could really do quite a bit with cameras. So those results has some positive but also some negative conclusions.

Russ Altman (11:58 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/inITpWWLAqA6DA88E4gpgjsCfwSf7f-7sIwo7rKYBgGPYKCAmNrhJ8rZC0OIcW01Tx7cSgV23aBtIR3tWZbW8Zn7jHA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=718.71)): And also the behavior that you just described makes it very clear that the officers are aware that they're doing things that are at least controversial, if not illegal because if their behavior is changing and if they refuse to do things, it shows a consciousness so that they really can't claim anymore, "Oh, I had no idea. This is the way we do it and I thought this is what I was supposed to do." Obviously, it's a more complicated story. So you made a brief mention, but I also wanted to ask you about the citizen surveys because you're looking at both sides of this relationship and you made a short reference to it. But tell me more about how you find out about the experience of the citizens in these locations.

Beatriz Magaloni  (12:38 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/r0USiD1z8ASxBjV05bqfl5jtb5lS6rq7pQmQQKHd-1xhKcqN3OdKVX3gv-0AIuUwl48q2703C-AudCIyXcTzdli-0gY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=758.22)): Yeah, this is a wonderful question because just collecting service in these settings is very difficult. So we were very fortunate to form collaborations with NGOs that have a high reputation in these areas and that are able to enter the favelas because often it's really too dangerous. You cannot go, you have to ask permission from the local drug lord. They have to... So basically what we did was to train enumerators who came from the favelas, and they themselves were the ones who collected the surveys for us. We collected around 5,000 interviews of the relationship with both the drug traffickers that ruled the favelas and the police. And it's really interesting. So we find it's a very mixed result. So in some areas, police are seen as the main enemy, as who is more dangerous towards the community, the criminals or the police. And they would say, "Oh, the police. For sure, the police here we see them as the villains."

(13:44 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/HCAgyDGg2inYEbvPAXdmA9L8LYjUwxb37RoDAz7YLPdihDYU1cVkmLBXd2_ljF1Ci5MicrxYX6wN0bcRWQNWbwNx2ZI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=824.82)): So we ask them questions, how much do you think you fear? Do you hate? All the words that they used were about fear, hatred, distrust, very little trust. They complain a lot about being frisked with no reason, their homes being invaded without any legal justification. So very tense relationship. And often they would tell you we'd rather go and report the crimes that we suffer to the drug traffickers that they can solve the crimes. They have something called Tribunal de Trafico. In many favelas the traffickers are the ones... Traffickers are called the drug traffickers or the gangs, who rule the favelas. They are better at solving conflicts than the police. So some people would tell you, "Us, well, we rather not have the police." We have this woman whom we interviewed when the police was entering their favelas, she said, "We've been solving conflicts the poor forever our own way. Why the hell do you come now and bring the police? You're going to make things worse."

(14:54 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/rjLm6GNMyQdrBMjTLsIruGyNzKF0yWA4joirpJt8uwllnH8kJyAKqHTMiWg6PftWkjaoL9-LoEpUkT0Rb3M-1GfU8Y8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=894.69)): And so I wrote a paper that's called Killing in the Slums, The Problem of Social Order, criminal Governance and Police Violence in Rio, where we find that there are really... We categorize the way rulers control or rule their territories, and we find a very big difference in some areas. I describe people really trust them more. They actually provide welfare to the communities. They solve their conflicts. They keep peace in very sort of tyrannical ways because for example, if you steal something, they can just sort of cut your arm, things like that. A really violent way of enforcing order, but order is enforced and they prefer that to the police. But in other areas, the criminals are really tyrannical. They really abuse citizens. They are fighting each other constantly. And there when you ask, what do you think about police? They prefer the police to be there because the tyrants are here, the criminals.

(16:02 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/KJ03VkBbTgOEDm89OrYmhVj-spyvgM8KT8ddp4gcKXpxr_3RXgmDVzEJslGAVhRWNiN28hWSMqt-Wy5d5SLgejRQZU8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=962.25)): So we found... I don't want to go in detail in the paper because it's quite complicated, but we find five different types of what we call criminal regimes. And interestingly, we document that when the state introduced these community-oriented policing approach, it produced very different results in each of these territories depending on how criminals relate to the community. And how capable the criminal organization is of controlling the violence of their men towards the community.

Russ Altman (16:38 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ENx52JKMybIJ2oM4z6QOpeTSpFoapK1QiB_9oAjRO_HQOB7uHATnu-O4An-lBa0ateQzxLUisFbjoesb0bDZP6CRybQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=998.13)): This is The Future of Everything with Russ Altman More with Beatriz Magaloni next. Welcome back to The Future of Everything. I'm Russ Altman, and I've been speaking with Professor Beatriz Magaloni about poverty, violence, and governance, especially in Latin America. In the last segment we discussed some of the challenges in Brazil, and in the next segment, Beatriz will tell us about Mexico. In particular, how is the war on drugs affecting Mexican violence and affecting the ability to get control of the drug cartels?

Beatriz Magaloni  (17:08 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/WWFddK2s4tJdGiyLquGnzbs97QBu44EPMbj_AI1xG_uJZEz0F89vdfNSSimDRerIKMsy1Lxe26QKity7bjmUPgY3HPU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1028.31)): Yes, so I began studying this when at the end of President Calderon's administration, he was the one who began the war in 2006. And during his administration violence escalated dramatically. Drug-related violence increased by 300%. And since then, our country has not been able to stabilize violence. We have been continuously sort of, I would not say continuously increasing, but we are as bad as the worst years during the Calderon period right now. So one of the studies that we collected was... Actually they were very interested in having a scientific evaluation of some of the interventions that we were doing. And in particularly the question was they had this strategy of arresting the leaders of the drug cartel. So they came up with a list that was published actually in the Economist saying, this is the number of people we're going to arrest by the name of cartel.

(18:08 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/HHU70SCQWtLWwcXIKvTSGADRFMKnmOqUlxyHziRbU2AAVwt60gs2fmSmTMRS702DZZR47cR3wBG9ndWtU1d9qOCNF9Q?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1088.22)): And at the end of the administration they had arrested, I don't recall what... Almost two-thirds of those names. So what we did was try to analyze what was the implication in terms of violence because we continue to see violence escalating. And it's very hard to do that scientifically because obviously it could be the case that you go and arrest in places that are very violent, so you cannot really attribute the violence to the arrest itself. So we had to construct something that is called synthetic controls to find municipalities that are very similar to the ones that got arrested, to be able to see how the violence trends changed once the arrest happened. And we were able to demonstrate that there was an increase of around 300% in homicide rates the six months after the arrest happened. And that was concentrated mostly in the age group of men who participate in criminal organizations.

(19:05 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/evVKC2GTJp_wpgY6qPuht0OJ5in_QyS9F3XkD2DENma0ekO5HWh15snaXavyMexalGB1s2wXLWxazcMkNrrq_a848lo?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1145.52)): But the very worrisome result is that there was a systematic increase in homicides against the general population once the arrest happens. So what it really suggested is that when the arrest happens, there is this sort of the lines of command in a criminal organization break. And then there is all these fights among parts of the cartel for leadership. And these criminal cells that often are under control of the cartel get loose and start to sort of predate on the population. So after that, we documented a lot of the increasing extortion against the population. So we also to measure this, I cannot go in detail, but we use a creative survey strategy that are called list experiments that you ask people different questions. You don't them, "Tell me whether a cartel has extorted you or not." But you ask them among these several things, how many have you done?

(20:09 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/0ke2wLHWfjoKvu33nT5V9kwPN6khI5NYZaVvaNWeWS6KYuVE8aJVxQRMCHMi9OYWZjUfhi2rneOycfZfddGjP4nFSkA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1209.72)): So they tell you three, four, and then you have a control and a treatment group. And so you can compare the difference between one and the other. And we found that there had been a systematic increase in extortion by members of the cartel against the population, and that this extortion concentrated more in places where you have competition among cartels. So basically what happened is that there was a fragmentation of criminal organizations in Mexico, and that as a result the population started to suffer. At the same time, I was studying the response of the police. So these arrests were done by the military, but also I wanted to see how police had changed its behavior. And I was very fortunate to count on a survey of more than 60,000 prisoners of the entire prison population really in Mexico. And the INEGI which is the Mexican Statistical office asked them what happened at the time of the arrest, who arrested them and what they did to them.

(21:13 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/0t2UHXlgcSMXN1pg_DDUEQu7ykVOYrqPFRhyo4XW8hQdsw0ds3yMCz4soOa3InGZaFQaoZ4CnQHrbbKPME2DvxFX2t4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1273.32)): So we are able to document with really incredible precision torture, so judicial torture. Basically what we discovered is that the Mexican police uses torture as a method of criminal investigation. They don't know how to do investigation. So basically they arrest and then they torture, and that's the way they convict criminals. So that means that likely a lot of people who are not guilty are in prisons in Mexico. So there was a very large reform done in 2008 that didn't start to come into effect until around 2013 in different judicial districts. So that allows us to measure with precision what was the impact of the reform on torture. And the reform basically what it does, is that it abolishes an inquisitorial system, criminal justice system that Mexico and in general in Latin America, we have had since colonial times. So these institutions had not been reformed since colonial times.

(22:21 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/1Eyt5nMHIbvj3-pt6yJLlQQYDn2OTmJ45RFRfncU-GZxWR26tuwIYIDvWw8lKgz9K2i_1df9-wpohHuEw-VjzAQlXnE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1341.24)): With this reform, we show that there is a very drastic decrease in judicial torture fortunately. And so that's some optimism that when you have important huge constitutional reform that makes coerced confessions much harder to validate in trials, you'll have a reduction of judicial torture. Although now a new survey came, and I want to see whether this is really holding or if there is a backslash, because it's possible that police now perceive that they cannot prosecute criminals unless they use torture. And so there might be temptations to go back to it. And obviously I want to emphasize that it continues to be a very prevalent practice, but that it's important to see that there is some optimism when there are institutional reforms that target these forms of police [inaudible 00:23:22].

Russ Altman (23:22 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/JI_SDGiHZrrcMkLTUCyXO6wDOyB-KkzVQkm-FD_94d6FcKW2nLJBjmANss5IV0xF7zDy2XcnY3Lh25rsrLh_a7qja6Y?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1402.2)): Yeah, that's quite remarkable. And I wonder, I suspect that you're also doing the citizen surveys that you described in Rio. What does the everyday person... Is it a very similar culture as to what we're seeing in Brazil or are there important differences in Mexico in terms of the attitudes towards the poor, police violence? Is it the similar story or is it... I'm guessing it's more a little bit different at least.

Beatriz Magaloni  (23:51 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/77iJHQE34H31xKdxJwQuWi5oLnTQ-XWahyEEea-lSaQugtZ4CMp-Cbe1UPag2ufi-Vvg8GVwXmonq25QbqA4ug2xQvI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1431.72)): It's a little different, the race question is different. Mexico has its own problems with racism, but we have a significantly lower percentage of Black population in Mexico. There is a lot of discrimination against indigenous populations, but those populations are not generally sort of in conflict with the law. So we observe different patterns of discrimination and abuse. But what we do observe is again, that police violence is more targeted towards poorer people. Richer people get more respect from the police because they have better contacts to get protected. And basically, that's an important similarity. And another similarity is that I also collected some surveys asking about endorsement to torture in different ways. So again, using survey experiments, try to see how much people really support this practice. And I was really blown away that even if you tell them this guy was arrested and the judge says it cannot be prosecuted because the police used torture, they still agree with the police using torture.

(25:07 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/3OV7pSDMeefQTSm94lxaLVPYc1qs37WIsxGrAzyP7j1qODX-_wx1qpFAUUzPPSkwwebWX9nKhr1qcYNwaGjIivHmRd8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1507.77)): So there is a big endorsement and this is worrisome. I think that is in societies where you have so much violence happening, people feel so insecure and this is a reality for so many people. You can go to work and you just simply disappear, you don't come back, especially if you come from these communities of peripheral, communities in the cities. People are too afraid and sometimes believe that just having sort of militarization of security, bring the military in or using torture, or in the case of Brazil, telling the police to act as vigilantes, that's going to resolve the problem. And unfortunately, study after study that I've done, this doesn't solve the problem. I mean fortunately because we don't want those strategies to be effective. We want strategies to be effective that respect human rights. And so that's another similarity.

Russ Altman (26:09 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/bDMHNVcn6vlb0QfXwPyut3TWdRYS2XQSh2QKG67dgw5R2Yvu7RAwOqv27qGs2IAHJGT0CRMSbqsfoltYnHedj3uEL8U?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1569.15)): So as the final question I guess I'd like to ask is, do we see internal movements towards this kind of more democratic way of, I'm sure there are people in these countries, and are they starting to get the attention of policymakers and the general citizenry to create movements that would make us optimistic?

Beatriz Magaloni  (26:28 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/_Y4drBuxMMK5jqRQmnbr8yLBB9vChidx59NjZhevnx2zwH9ryWDS0ZEudyyM3Knh3BIjhD5GONtaIYR-0VJFzKaS7zo?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1588.41)): So I have two different responses and very quickly, in very different states, in a very rich state and then in poorer states in the south of Mexico. So in Monterrey, this is the state of Nuevo León, Monterrey is a very wealthy city. They had one of the most violent turf wars around 2010. And the business community of course got frightened. It was very violent. You would see dead bodies every day in the roads, and they decided they had to do something about it. So they fired the entire police corporation, and this is... So they fired the state police, all the municipalities police and they recreated a new police corporation. They did it once, it didn't work. They did it twice and so what I observed, we went there and collected interviews with all the police officers in the area. And I cannot say it's perfect, but they have slowly created a system of professionalization of police that is working better than in other areas of Mexico.

(27:35 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/wx6U9Gf8Qk3ggwVlSasyAvdSOyNvytU-kcYyPlinTXcICArCS663Y-DKsip6sEey24OzweJfLqUnyqNjRN4BSnWmQwU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1655.34)): Police are paid better. Police are promoted, it's not according to the politician that comes to the municipality and you change the entire police corporation. There is slowly some professionalization being built there, although not enough attention in the rest of the states in Mexico to see how to replicate this. And the other response that I find positive and very optimistic is in the south of Mexico, indigenous communities in the state of Oaxaca and now increasingly in other states are granted autonomy by the constitution. And so we went there and studied how those communities police themselves and how well they can actually deter cartel from entering their communities. And we find very incredible results. So basically having a police that comes from your community, that gets rotated. That people actually belong to that community who serve in the police, and then they are going to serve in different other public [inaudible 00:28:36] they are called.

(28:38 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/f2CufAg6r0uCqkB3vsMiJf2Gt0iBxraYIs4YZJBEkA1wlR_CVBzLklPT2CVUewUOWiF5JFCSXV4GcdkfinyMaW06DKQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1718.61)): This actually works quite well, and we are very happy finding these results because it tells us that when you have strong communities that really sort of they have this culture of participation in the public good, you can't really defend yourself from this sort of violence and also from having your own young men participating in more violent organizations.

Russ Altman (29:08 (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/poVbluXE6RfE2Hecv1LcfrZlpI-QBFo5F9WLFpp1dnKYaqBYnTOkCKd35umLiPBLpcfxZjp_DUCGOa8axHCv7-d1p0I?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=1748.16)): Well, thanks to Beatriz Magaloni, that was the future of policy, violence and governance. You have been listening to The Future of Everything with Russ Altman. You can follow me on Twitter @RBaltman, and you can follow Stanford Engineering @StanfordENG.