The Punitive City: Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico. This item is unavailable.The Punitive City: Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico

In the eyes of the global media, modern Mexico has become synonymous with crime, violence and insecurity. But while media fascination and academic engagement has focussed on the drug war, an equally dangerous phenomenon has taken root. In The Punitive City, Markus-Michael Müller argues that what has emerged in Mexico is not just a punitive urban democracy, in which those at the social and political margins face growing violence and exclusion. More alarmingly, it would seem that clientelism in the region is morphing into a private, political protection racket.

Vital reading for anyone seeking to understand the implications of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly widespread across Latin America.

Markus-Michael Müller is an assistant professor of Latin American politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. His work has focused on transnational security governance, postcolonial state formation, and the urbanization of neoliberalism. He is the author of Public Security in the Negotiated State: Policing in Latin America and Beyond (2012).