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- Title
Instruments of Colonialism: Historicizing Corruption and Abuse in the Puerto Rico Police .
- Authors
JIMÉNEZ, MÓNICA A.; LEBRÓN, MARISOL
- Abstract
A range of actors, from human and civil rights groups to the FBI and the US Department of Justice, have repeatedly declared the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) one of the most corrupt police forces under U.S. jurisdiction. The PRPD has been accused of fostering a culture of repression and impunity that facilitates elite political maneuvering and encourages graft among the rank and file—a condition that has persisted since its inception in the early 20th century. In this paper, we examine several instances of corruption from the early 20th century to highlight how the structures of colonial capitalism in the archipelago have deeply shaped the corruption of the PRPD. We argue that colonial capitalism’s authoritarian mode of governance, in fact, requires police corruption in order to function. We challenge the contention that police corruption is something unique to the institutional culture of the PRPD, a notion that traffics in colonial stereotypes about morally lax Puerto Rican subjects, and instead understand policing as a project of race and class differentiation and discipline writ large, which positions colonial capitalism as structuring corruption, and, in turn, sees police corruption in Puerto Rico as emergent from and reliant on both colonialism and policing itself.
- Subjects
IMPERIALISM; CORRUPTION; UNITED States. Federal Bureau of Investigation; UNITED States. Dept. of Justice; STEREOTYPES; POLICE corruption
- Publication
Centro Journal, 2022, Vol 34, Issue 2, p51
- ISSN
1538-6279
- Publication type
Article