The savior Rudy Giuliani goes to Guatemala City

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently visited Guatemala City to speak at a forum organized by the Guatemalan Development Foundation. On the one hand, former Mayor Giuliani said somethings rather reasonable.

“My top recommendation is to set up a system to measure the effectiveness of your police, your prosecutors and your prisons,” Giuliani, 70, said today at a forum sponsored by the not-for-profit Guatemalan Development Foundation. “That helps give you the right answers to questions like how many more police do you need. At what level should they be compensated so you can reduce the level of corruption.”

Following allegations of corruption, several thousand police have been removed from their positions under the Colom and Perez Molina administrations. At the same time, they have been trying to increase the number of police to 35,000 or so. As of December, they counted approximately 30,000. The United Nations recommends 222 police per 100,000 population. That 35,000 number then is just about right. However, it's a national average that doesn't take departmental differences into account. Another problem is that these new police are green and tend to be involved in a larger share of criminal activity than they should (read that in Prensa Libre some months ago).

CICIG and Attorney General Paz y Paz were also involved in removing court officials. There was the judges of impunity report that CICIG produced went nowhere. Paz y Paz needed congress' authorization to remove corrupt prosecutors, or at least those who were not performing their jobs satisfactorily. Prosecutions are up and impunity is down. Even with improvements, the system is still failing.Not sure if he did but it would have been nice had the Mayor criticized the recent judicial selection process in Guatemala as a setback for the rule of law. If elected officials can't take such high profile selections seriously, the Mayor shouldn't have bothered coming.

“When you have a tremendous amount of crime in your society, you are not going to solve it with schools, libraries, nice neighborhoods and sports teams,” Giuliani said. “You have to emphasize law enforcement. As soon you get the crime down, the next thing you do is build up the social programs. That’s when you create more jobs, better neighborhoods, better schools.”

I'm assuming that there's good theoretical and empirical research on this timing question. That's how the Mayor works obviously. Effective law enforcement comes before crime prevention programs. I don't know. I don't like the either/or dichotomy. It seems as if you need to improve the police force and criminal justice system at the same time you invest in programs to reduce criminal activity. Again, I'd rather the Mayor to have said you need to invest in law enforcement to tackle crime rather than investing in the military to tackle crime. We've been saying that for awhile.

You'd have to take a look at the plan that he delivered to the Guatemalan government. I assume he delivered a plan. He says he spent the last four months reviewing Guatemalan crime data and police practices. But if I didn't know any better I'd say that this sounds like he was calling for a return to failed mano dura practices of the past. I really hope that is not what he is saying in public and in private.