NEVER AGAIN? POLICE VIOLENCE AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN BUENOS AIRES AND SÃO PAULO: THE CASES OF THE VILLA 31 DE RETIRO AND HELIÓPOLIS (original) (raw)

Killing in the Slums: The Problems of Social Order and Police Violence in Rio De Janeiro

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016

State interventions against drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this paper offers a theory about different social order dynamics among five types of criminal regimes-Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Anarchic. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors; predate or cooperate with the community; and hold a monopoly or contest territory with rival DTOs. Police interventions in these criminal orders pose different challenges and are associated with markedly different local security outcomes. Evidence for the theory is provided by the use a multi-method research design combining quasiexperimental statistical analyses, extensive qualitative research and a large N survey in the context of Rio de Janeiro's "Pacifying Police Units" (UPPs), which sought to reclaim control of the slums from organized criminal groups.

Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro

American Political Science Review, 2020

tate interventions against organized criminal groups (OCGs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this article offers a theory about criminal governance in five types of criminal regimes-Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Split. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors, abuse or cooperate with the community, and hold a monopoly or contest territory with rival OCGs. Police interventions in these criminal regimes pose different challenges and are associated with markedly different local security outcomes. We provide evidence of this theory by using a multimethod research design combining quasiexperimental statistical analyses, automated text analysis, extensive qualitative research, and a large-N survey in the context of Rio de Janeiro's "Pacifying Police Units" (UPPs), which sought to reclaim control of the favelas from criminal organizations.

Violence and the State at the Urban Margins

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2013

Based on thirty months of ethnographic fieldwork in a violence-ridden, lowincome district located in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, this article examines the state's presence at the urban margins and its relationships to widespread depacification of poor people's daily life. Contrary to descriptions of destitute urban areas in the Americas as either governance voids deserted by the state or militarized spaces firmly controlled by the state's iron fist, this article argues that law enforcement in Buenos Aires's high-poverty zones is intermittent, selective, and contradictory. By putting the state's fractured presence at the urban margins under the ethnographic microscope, the article reveals its key role in the perpetuation of the violence it is presumed to prevent.

Violence and urban governance in Neoliberal Cities in Latin America

2013

This paper explores the responses of Latin American governments to the phenomenon of high levels of criminal violence and social conflict in Latin American cities. The region has the highest homicide rates in the world and the some of the highest levels of ongoing social protest. It outlines a neoliberal urban security model that has emerged in Latin American cities alongside urban political economy regime supporting 'competitive cities'. It examines its impact on controlling crime and creating more inclusive urban space drawing on examples from México City, Bogotá and Caracas. It argues that urban segregation is driven by the spatializing of security and the selective support for urban development / renewal. The project of making cities safe for people and investment is accompanied by securitization, the risk management of 'dangerous' urban spaces through repression. Making cities safe involves the management of the level of crime and the level of fear, the objective and the subjective impact of urban violence. Citizen security programs seek to address citizen insecurity through participatory citizenship but they often also reinforce urban segregation and exclusion not inclusion (Goldstein 2010).

La nata contra el vidrio: urban violence and democratic governability in Argentina

Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2000

The article argues that the increase in crime and urban violence in Argentina, especially in Buenos Aires, can be explained as an outcome of the interaction of four factors: the new social relations established by neoliberalism; the incapacity of the state to resolve the social conflicts which have arisen from these new social relations; the failure to democratise the security forces; and the exclusion of a sector of society from the rights of effective democratic citizenship. The increase in crime and urban violence is, thus, analysed as a problem of governability.

Policing, urban poverty and insecurity in Latin America: The case of Mexico City and Buenos Aires

This article explains how, in the late 20th century, Latin America went through a transition in social-control policy that followed and paralleled the area’s transition from a pervasively authoritarian polity to a democratic one bearing a strong neoliberal imprint. Social-control strategies initially designed to serve a national-security doctrine mainly directed against political opponents morphed into strategies for the repressive government of the advanced marginal groups that for the most part live within economically deprived urban areas. The focus here will be on Buenos Aires and Mexico City. These two cases will be used to exemplify the way in which crime and public security in the Latin American megalopolis have become an important part of the political agenda and how the fears and concerns so amplified have stimulated strong neo-authoritarian pressures that in certain ways have stifled police-democratization processes which had got under way in both Argentina and Mexico in the last decade of the 20th century.

Community policing in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro

Police Practice and Research, 2013

This article evaluates the adoption of a new model for community policing in two communities in Rio de Janeiro. They were initially dominated by heavily armed criminal gangs that challenged the hegemony of the Brazilian state. A version of community policing was introduced in these two poor areas. Its principal feature was a commitment to delivering honest, professional, and respectful policing; other initiatives commonly associated with community policing in the northern hemisphere would have to come later. The questions addressed here were whether the police could actually mount such a program, and if they could respond effectively to crime and disorder while avoiding abusive conduct. Six hundred residents of the study communities were surveyed regarding the program and their concerns about crime and police misconduct. The survey found widespread support for the initial intervention by Rio de Janeiro's police, which aimed at damping the presence of armed criminal gangs and reducing omnipresent fear of crime. The findings suggest that it is possible for police to improve the quality of life and reduce concern about crime in one of the most difficult urban environments in the Americas.

Violence and Public Safety as a Democratic Simulacrum in Brazil

International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2018

This paper analyzes actions taken by eight special programs for homicide reduction implemented in the states of Bahia, Ceará, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, as well as the Brazilian Federal District. It aims to understand the historical permanence of lethal violence as one of the most striking social characteristics of Brazil and defends the argument that the prevention and tackling of homicides – understood in a broad sense that includes all intentional violent deaths – are operated, both politically and institutionally, from a symbolic simulacrum that causes incremental initiatives to fail to reach the architecture of criminal justice and public security institutions. As structural reforms in the criminal justice and public security system face several obstacles to being approved by the Legislative Branch, this simulacrum makes the police force and other institutions belonging to the system to continue operating from a center of criminal policies that do not depend on the construction of a democratic project of public security, protection of life or civil and human rights. The study reiterates that the debate on transparency and data quality can allow actions to strengthen institutional capacity for monitoring and evaluation and/or strategic litigation, which in turn may weaken of the path dependence and worldviews that operate the identified simulacrum. In other words, the debate on transparency and data quality is one of the strongest battlefronts for the reduction of violence and for the democratization of public safety in Brazil.