Countries across Latin America have undergone impressive efforts to consolidate their relatively new democracies and institutionalize respect for human rights. The chapter identifies important reforms that have occurred, including transitional justice, constitutional reform, and judicial reform. Despite these impressive efforts, violence by state actors has grown to alarming levels. This chapter examines this paradox and argues that political leaders view governance through a threat lens, which leads them to respond to everyday concerns with violence. We call this public order violence. We suggest that underlying legacy conditions (uneven state capacity, weak rule of law, and socioeconomic inequalities) are met with public order violence, which results in a cycle of violence that is difficult to escape. The chapter ends with a discussion of the organization of the remainder of the book, which explores how violence occurs—the institutional changes that have facilitated the proliferation of public order violence—and why it occurs—the political, economic, and legal justifications for increased violence.