ABSTRACT
The way in which the crime issue is approached has shifted away from the domestic security perspective developed during the civil wars in Central America and dictatorships in South America, whose principal objective was the consolidation of an internal control system that prohibited social and political movements. There has been a clear influence and transfer in the Inter-American region where three concepts played a particularly relevant role: war on drugs, zero tolerance, and community policing. The concept of zero tolerance was coined to express the “hard hand” that the government should adopt in any act that transgresses laws. In Latin America, “zero tolerance” was fully assumed as an effective way of fighting crime, especially in political electoral discourse. For the US, the threats associated to the new security strategy are linked to any actor who could support radical groups in other parts of the world and carry out attacks of various kinds.
