Inequitable Participation of Neighborhood Organizations in Crime Prevention Policies in Urban Peru.

This paper explores how crime prevention and public safety policies that profess “inclusion” in public governance through civil participation have effectively institutionalized local politics of exclusion and inequality in highland Peru. Judgments and prejudices that equate particular “deviant” behaviors with certain social sectors have substantial bearing on the interpretations of urban safety as a whole, as well as on corresponding alignments between causal responsibility and political obligation. I present ethnographic data from urban highland Peru to illustrate how perceptions of urban crime and ideas of social responsibility correlate ideologically and tangibly to divergent expectations over civil participation, whereby unequal demands and expectations are placed on neighborhood organizations from different social sectors. I use this example to illustrate how urban crime, social deviance, and public safety are not only interpreted through semiotic ideologies of social difference, but also managed through policies and practices that further ingrain social differentiation and inequality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]