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Anthropology

Esteban Salmon Perrilliat

Power to the Prosecution? An Ethnography of Criminal Investigation in Mexico City
2023-24 Dissertation Fellowship

My dissertation questions the role of criminal prosecutors in democratic societies by observing their daily work in Mexico City. Based on a complex data set of fieldnotes, interviews, archival notes, and recordings of judicial hearings, my dissertation argues that the power of prosecutors emerges from their intermediary position between police forces' discretionary use of violence in the street and the legal protection of individual rights carried out by judges in courtrooms. Criminal justice reform efforts trying to strengthen the rule of law should then pay more attention to the informal leverage of prosecutors and not only to their formal statutory powers.

The Administration of Punishment: An Ethnography of Criminal Prosecution in Mexico City
2022 Research Data Grant