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7 - Córdoba – High Levels of Inequality in a Strong System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Daniel M. Brinks
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Summary

La ley se hace para todos

Mas sólo al pobre le rige.

La ley es tela de araña

En mi inorancia lo esplico:

No la tema el hombre rico,

Nunca la tema el que mande,

Pues la ruempe el bicho grande

Y sólo enrieda a los chicos.

José Hernández, La Vuelta Martín Fierro (1878), vv. 1091–92

On average, rights in Córdoba are respected and enforced at almost the same rate as in Uruguay. The per capita level of police killings is comparable to Uruguay's and drastically lower than the levels in the other three locations, and the average conviction rate is about 45 percent, again very similar to Uruguay's. But if we scratch just below the surface, Córdoba's results are deeply disturbing. This jurisdiction shows the highest level of socio-economic outcome disparity of any of the systems examined here. The probability of a conviction when a police officer kills a middle-class person is nearly three times higher than when the victim is of lesser means (see Chapter 3). Conviction rates are twenty times higher if the victim's survivors are able to retain an attorney to work with the prosecutors and can organize public demonstrations. The courts' positive response is more closely conditioned on an investment of private resources here than in any of the other places we examine. In this chapter I discuss the roots of this high level of inequality, without losing sight of the fact that Córdoba does achieve an impressive conviction rate overall.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Judicial Response to Police Killings in Latin America
Inequality and the Rule of Law
, pp. 205 - 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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