La Revista Estudios Socio-Jurídicos y el editor invitado de este número especial agradecen a los autores del artículo y a los editores de Comparative Politics por haber facilitado su reproducción en español. La traducción fue hecha por Marco Danies.
Despite democratization throughout Latin America, massive human rights
abuses continue in the region's prisons. Conditions have become so bad
that most governments have begun to enact improvements, including new
criminal codes and facility decongestion. However, once in place, these
reforms are undermined by chaotic criminal justice systems, poor policy
administration, and rising crime rates leading to greater detention
powers for the police. After describing current prison conditions in
Latin America and the principal reforms to address them, this article
explains how political and administrative limitations hinder the range
of agencies and officials responsible for implementing those changes.
Why does Latin America struggle to implement even its increasingly strong and broadly supported environmental polices? To answer that question, this article examines the primary tool of enforcement, environmental prosecution, one of the region's newest and most‐innovative developments in policy and institutional reform. It creates an analytical framework that explains how the two pillars of prosecution, the state and the law, are also its two main weaknesses. Within the state, it examines deficiencies in investigation and resources. Within the law, it focuses on the lack of clarity in laws and in policy regulations that support them. Together, these common and inherent policy challenges make it difficult for governments throughout Latin America to halt crimes such as illegal deforestation, mining, and road building. The article develops a way to understand comparatively how ably policies are supported in practice. Empirically, it draws on five years of fieldwork in the region's two main tropical areas, Central America and the Amazon Basin. In addition to its concrete policy assessments and recommendations, the article brings a new dimension to the study of the state in Latin America and to the field of criminology.
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