During his time as New York City major, Rudy Giuliani was known above all as a fierce partisan of “law and order.” Since he left office in 2001, he has leveraged that reputation into a lucrative private-sector consulting career and now heads Giuliani Partners. The company’s subsidiary, Giuliani Security and Safety (GSS), offers “a comprehensive range of security and crisis management services,” and boasts “affiliations or previous engagements” in more than a dozen countries around the world.

Latin America has been a particular place of interest. Giuliani has given speeches about security and development at private-sector events in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Puerto Rico, and his firm has landed high-priced consulting deals in several countries in the region.

But many question the extension of Giuliani’s “zero-tolerance” approach to public safety in Latin America. In the world’s most violent region — where racial discrimination, corrupt judiciaries, and abusive security forces have persisted for decades — some say heavy-handed policies like the ones Giuliani promotes make things even worse.