The Consequences of Militarized Policing for Human Rights: Evidence from Mexico

What are the consequences of the militarization of public safety? Governments increasingly rely on militaries for policing, but the systematic study of this phenomenon’s consequences for human rights has been neglected. NGO and journalistic accounts point to widespread violations by the military, but these snapshots do not necessarily present evidence of systematic abuse. Based on unique data on military deployments and human rights complaints in Mexico, we conduct a systematic, country-wide study of the consequences of constabularization for human rights. Following matching and difference-in-difference strategies, we find that it leads to a 150% increase in complaints against federal security forces. We also leverage deployments for disaster-relief operations and complaints against non-security institutions to show that the increase is not due to underlying conditions or higher reporting in the military’s presence. The findings have important implications for our understanding of quality of democracy and the democratic ideals of civilian policing.