Police in Managua, Nicaragua / Photo credit: jorgemejia / Foter.com / CC BY

Nicaragua – often accused of keeping bad company on political and economic matters – finds itself in a special group of countries that are doing quite well combatting crime.  Along with Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, it has one of the lowest crime and violence rates in Latin America.  At a discussion* at the Wilson Center in Washington this week (click here for video), experts identified factors explaining why these countries stand out, including the democratic traditions, relatively strong institutional frameworks, and economic stability in Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay.  Nicaragua, on the other hand, has witnessed dictatorships, coups, chronically weak institutions, and the sort of grinding poverty that fuels chronic security challenges.  Gross generalizations are risky, but analysts probed why Nicaraguans generally trust their police force and commit fewer violent crimes.

Among the key factors is that Nicaragua, like the other three top performers, separated the police from the armed forces and increased civilian control over it.  Unlike in the rest of Central America, where revolutionary movements did not triumph, the Sandinistas abolished the hated National Guard in 1979 and created a force under the Interior Ministry.  Over the course of the Esquipulas peace accords, the elections in 1990, and the passage of a Ley Orgánica de la Policía Nacional in 1996, civilian oversight was institutionalized and respect for human rights and judicial process grew.  The Sandinistas’ promotion of mechanisms for community vigilance – a negative when used to root out suspected “counterrevolutionaries” in the 1980s – later helped communities develop cohesive approaches to citizen security and contributed to respect of institutions.  Another factor is that, like the other three countries under discussion, Nicaragua has a relatively low gun ownership rate.

Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua have another thing in common:  none has resorted to the sort of militarized strategies toward transnational or homegrown crime that Colombia, Mexico and the United States have espoused.  The Nicaraguan National Police have generally maintained closer ties with their Scandinavian counterparts, who emphasize addressing the root causes of crime and violence – a philosophy that Nicaraguans of most political stripes embrace more readily than the emphasis on military-style operations.  The steadily worsening situation in Honduras, where Washington has pursued collaboration with the military, has convinced many in Central America that the militarized approach doesn’t work.  The mix of limited training and operational cooperation that the United States provides Costa Rica would probably work well in Nicaragua, but Washington – prodded by legislators who still see Nicaragua through a 1980s optic and condition cooperation on electoral performance – appears cool to fashioning a flexible package of joint initiatives.  Rather than applying the Colombian-Mexican security model to Central America, perhaps the successful elements of the Nicaraguan model can be expanded in the troubled region.

*CLALS Research Fellow and InSight Crime Senior Fellow Javier Meléndez delivered the lead presentation on Nicaragua.