ABSTRACT
While a substantial international literature on police accountability has formed over the last years, it was not until the last decade of the twentieth century that systematic study of the Mexican police began. This situation creates anomalies. On the one hand, we can have a good idea of what ought to be the norms of police behavior; on the other, our empirical knowledge of what actually happens inside the Mexican police is only beginning to take shape. Experts are few, serious independent studies are scarce, and official reports by the police themselves are still notable for their lack of sufficient up-to-date information. Not that there isn’t quantitative data available. The numbers of officers, the duration and contents of training courses, types of equipment and weapons—the researcher can discover about every thing from these to the voluminous legal mandates and organic structures of the various police forces in the country. But from a qualitative analytical perspective, the information needed to assess the overall police force condition remains extremely scarce.
