By Maribel Vásquez

Photo credit: Harry Pujols / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Criminality and violence often translate into fear and institutional distrust in Latin American contexts – and give rise to private security companies (PSCs) that play an increasingly important role in public security with little or no civilian oversight.  In the Dominican Republic, for example, PSCs are proliferating as surveys indicate a widespread perception that the Ministry of Interior and Police (MIP) is woefully inadequate in scale and capabilities.  According to a study by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the UNDP in 2012, over 50 percent of Dominicans said that they believed that the National Police was involved in criminal or illicit activity. More troublesome, of all countries surveyed*, the Dominican Republic, with 64.8 percent, reported the highest percentage of people who believe that security is deteriorating in the country.

With such levels of public disorder and perceived police ineffectiveness, the Dominican Republic has experienced a boom in PSCs.  The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey in 2011 reported that PSCs employed 30,000 people in the Dominican Republic – and the number has surely grown since then.  The country has 29,357 formally registered police officers, yielding a ratio of 1.02 private security agents for each police officer.  Often, PSCs are better equipped in the country than security forces.  In the Dominican Republic, PSCs are under the jurisdiction of the Superintendence of Private Security (SPS), a branch of the armed forces – a fact that causes tension with the civilian companies and the police in whose jurisdiction they operate.  This absence of the MIP – the state institution directly responsible for citizen security – from the oversight process has inhibited coordination between the PSCs and the police, and diminished the government’s ability to provide public security.

The traditional definition of national defense in the Dominican Republic and other Latin America countries has included citizen security and entailed deep military involvement – and often abuses – in matters now considered best handled by civilians.  The continuing shadow of the Dominican military in security affairs has weakened the National Police.  President Danilo Medina last year deployed soldiers to patrol the streets alongside the police to combat crime.  Such practices make the police less legitimate in the eyes of the public – and further drive popular demand for PSCs.  Reforming the public security landscape in the Dominican Republic will require great political will.  More effective civilian participation in security affairs, through oversight and professionalization of the National Police, must take place to ultimately strengthen democratic accountability.  The PSCs should be brought under civilian control.  

*LAPOP-PNUD (2012). Countries surveyed: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, República Dominicana, Uruguay, Venezuela.