This book is part of an ongoing project at the Woodrow Wilson Center and builds on the earlier volume Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democratization and the State (2003). An introduction by the editors is followed by two sections, the first dealing with general issues and themes, and the second consisting of case studies. The strength of police research as well as the range of reform initiatives in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico is reflected in a certain bias towards issues of citizen security in the major urban centres of these countries; six of the ten articles are devoted to them. A comparative approach predominates.

As the editors explain, a central premise of the project is that an ‘inflated perception of insecurity presents a real threat to Latin America's democracies, as citizens call for more repressive policing and wax nostalgic for the kind of heavy-handed social control they experienced under dictatorships’ (p. xi). To combat this perception of insecurity, the editors advocate increased citizen participation in public security policy. While they take such perceptions seriously, their prime concern is not with the much-touted crime wave, but rather with strengthening the rule of law (p. 3).

Within the section entitled ‘Issues and Themes’, Hugo Frühling discusses Latin American experiences with community policing, Claudio Fuentes presents evidence from Argentina and Chile on police accountability, while Claudio Beato and his co-authors argue in favour of the creation of reliable data and more sophisticated indicators to assess the impact of urban violence on society. This is followed by six case studies. Paulo de Mesquita Neto analyses paths towards police and judicial reform in Latin America, distinguishing between reform monitored by international actors, reform led by the government, and reform through political agreement. Under the latter rubric, he deals briefly with the role of organised civil society actors that is analysed in greater detail in Fuentes' insightful contribution. Heather Ward reviews police reform in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, while Catalina Smulovitz focuses on experiences with citizen participation in security policy in the same three countries. Rather oddly, Ward's analysis seems to take us no further than 2001 and so provides only an unfinished account. Thus, she tells us that the outcome of Carabineros de Chile's Plan Cuadrante remains unknown because it is ‘so new’ (p. 190), yet implementation began in 2000. Worse, in discussing the process of reform and counter-reform in the province of Buenos Aires, she states that it ‘is not clear’ whether provincial governor Carlos Ruckauf ‘will commit his administration to realizing a new ethics for respectful and effective police work’ (p. 182), yet Ruckauf left office in 2002, having maintained to the last the ‘iron fist’ approach that had previously helped him to win the provincial governorship. Given that this volume was published in 2006, the reader might reasonably expect to be told the end of the story. The final three contributions focus on individual countries: Föhrig et al. analyse the impact of Argentina's National Crime Prevention Plan on (perceptions of) security in the city of Buenos Aires; Carlos Basombrío Iglesias offers an avowedly personal account of police reform in Peru under Alejandro Toledo, a process in which he played a leading role. Arturo Alvarado Mendoza analyses the development of crime in Mexico City, arguing that official statistics reflect government priorities and concerns rather than real crime trends. It would be difficult to argue with the editors' conclusion that ‘it is not only possible to achieve security in a democratic society but that security, the rule of law, and democracy are actually complementary and self-reinforcing objectives’ (pp. 321–2). Rather less self-evident is their faith in citizen participation as a solution to problems of abusive policing and as a means to enhance security. As Fuentes' analysis of the struggle for police accountability in Argentina and Chile shows, civil society includes well-organised pressure groups that lobby for more, not less police repression; the thoughtful analyses by Smulovitz and Föhrig et al. also point to questionable aspects of citizen involvement. Their case studies serve as a useful reminder that the concept of community policing in its various guises has been subjected to a barrage of criticism because of its potentially non-benign impact on policing within the rule of law. In societies characterised by extreme inequality, the effects of unequal citizen involvement may actually exacerbate the inequitable provision of public security. One would have wished the editors to address this point in their concluding remarks. Nevertheless, Toward a Society under Law remains an impressive collection of essays. As one of the contributors (Ward) points out, the growing body of police research and evaluation in Latin America is still small (p. 173); the volume under review represents an important addition to this research and will be an indispensable tool for scholars and practitioners.