ABSTRACT
Following the signing of the Peace Accords that ended a 36-year civil war, Guatemala has been plagued with violent crime, ineffective public security institutions, and corruption. Since the mid-1990s, crime control policies in Guatemala have generally relied on hard-line measures that emphasize the continued role of the military as a defender of internal public security. Politicians use crime control as a tool for reelection, promoting short-term gains as a means to win votes. Despite recent effort toward security sector reform and some improvement in violent crime rates, future political leaders will most likely continue to support heavy-handed military solutions to the crime problem because of widespread citizen support for such measures.
