The Punitive Moment: Recent Transformations in Uruguayan Policing

This chapter analyzes the discursive and material changes within Uruguay’s police during the country’s fifteen years of social democratic government led by the Frente Amplio. During those years, particularly by the end of the first Frente Amplio’s administration and at the beginning of the second one, Uruguay turned to a “punitive moment” transforming the police into a decisive actor in that process. Through an intense political agenda and political rhetoric, which have transformed the police into a “privileged victim,” and together with internal political realignments and tensions, the Uruguayan process of reform of the last years contributes, with its own singularities, to a better understanding of reform process globally.