Two Decades of Police Training in Guatemala: Two Decades of Police Training in Guatemala

When the peace accords were signed in Guatemala in 1996, a civil conflict of 36 years was ended and created a new civil police force, the National Civil Police (Policia Nacional Civil, PNC). From the start a very important aspect of the police reform process was police training and therefore a new police academy (APNC) was opened in 1997. Police training was almost non-existing before and the low educational level of the police personnel was subjected to criticism and worries. With the help of a multitude of foreign donors’ police education was developed at the police academy.
This paper discusses the highlights of almost thirty years of police training in Guatemala. It will exam the initial police training given by the Spanish Civil Guards and the United Nations Verification Commission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), the training programs provided by the Dutch Organization for Internationalization in Education (NUFFIC) in 2000s, and the more recent U.S. State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) training. It will show that over the years different donors and different educational models were implemented at the police academy, often blueprints of policing models implemented in other countries. Those programs were not very well adapted to the Guatemalan situation, there was little ownership of the training programs by the Guatemalan PNC or the government and no long-term sustainable police training programs were developed.