Moving Mountains and Changing Seas: Fomenting Reform for Democratic Policing in Brazil

Elizabeth Leeds
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University

Within the context of increasing levels of urban violence and crime often exacerbated by corrupt, repressive, and ineffective police, and a general recognition that public safety (or lack thereof) and violence are the prime concern of Brazil's urban populations, there are small but encouraging signs that police reform is possible. This talk will focus of the challenges and opportunities in fostering institutional change of the police. Discussed will be the institutional/political context of reform efforts, external oversight, the relationship between the police and human rights communities and police university relationships.

Elizabeth Leeds is a Research Scholar at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU. She recently returned from a 6 and a half year stint as Program Officer for Governance and Civil Society at the Ford Foundation's Brazil Office in Rio de Janeiro. In that capacity she supported projects to encourage good governance with a particular focus on institutional change for democratic policing. Prior to that Liz was the Executive Director of the Center for International Studies at MIT. Recent publications include Cocaine and Parallel Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local Level Democratization, Latin American Research Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 1996.

When: Thursday, December 11 4:30pm
Where: Room 9205
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
(@34th Street)

To reserve, send e-mail to brazilproject@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096