Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-12T01:53:47.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rethinking Police Violence in Brazil: Unmasking the Public Secret of Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jan Hoffman French
Jan Hoffman French*
Affiliation:
University of Richmond jfrench@richmond.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Brazilian cities, perhaps the most disturbing criminal activity is the violence perpetrated by police officers themselves. This article is an invitation and a provocation to reconsider social scientific thinking about police violence in Brazil. Illustrated by a court decision from a Northeastern city, in which a black man won a case against the state for being falsely arrested and abused by a black police officer on the grounds of racism, this article investigates three paradoxes: Brazilians fear both crime and the police; black police beat black civilians; and government officials disavow responsibility by stigmatizing the police on racial grounds. It then proposes an alternative reading of these paradoxes that opens the possibility for rethinking police reform and argues that democratization in Brazil is deeply intertwined with the future of its darkest-skinned citizens.

Type
Critical Debates
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Winter 2013 , pp. 161 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alex, Nicholas. 1969. Black in Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts.Google Scholar
Amar, Paul. 2005. Táticas e termos de luta contra o racismo institucional nos setores de polícia e de segurança. In Ramos and Musumeci 2005. 230–81.Google Scholar
Arias, Enrique Desmond. 2006. Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Arias, Enrique Desmond, and Goldstein, Daniel M., eds. 2010. Violent Democracies in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bandeira, Lourdes, and Suárez, Mireya. 2001. Ordem publica, discriminação e repressão. In Violěncia policial: tolerância zero? ed. David de Oliveira, Dijaci, Augusto dos Santos, Sales, and Getulio de Brito e Silva, Valéria. Goiânia: Editora UFG. 129–50.Google Scholar
Barros, Geova da Silva. 2008. Filtragem racial: a cor na seleção do suspeito. Revista Brasileira de Segurança Publica 2, 3: 134–55.Google Scholar
Beato, Claudio. 2012. Crimes e cidades. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.Google Scholar
Brasil, Glauciria Mota, Bruno Lopes, Emanuel, and Miranda, Ana Karine Pessoa C.. 2011. Direitos humanos e formação policial: reflexões sobre limites e possibilidades. O Público e o Privado 18: 111–27.Google Scholar
Bretas, Marcos Luiz, and Poncioni, Paula. 1999. A cultura policial e o policial civil carioca. In Cidadania, justiça e violěncia, ed. Chaves Pandolfi, Dulce, Murilo de Carvalho, José, Piquet Carneiro, Leandro, and Grynszpan, Mario. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas. 149–64.Google Scholar
Brito, Dyane. 2003. Fear as the Commodity Blacks Own the Most: an Essay on Police Violence against Black People and the Poor in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. National Political Science Review, Special Issue: Race and Democracy in the Americas. 9: 96–104.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa. 1984. A política dos outros: o cotidiano dos moradores da periferia e o que pensam do poder e dos poderosos. São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa. 2002. The Paradox of Police Violence in Democratic Brazil. Ethnography 3, 3: 235–63.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa. 2006. “I Came to Sabotage Your Reasoning!” Violence and Resignifications of Justice in Brazil. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, ed. Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John L.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 102–49.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Teresa, and Holston, James. 1999. Democracy and Violence in Brazil. Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, 4: 691–729.Google Scholar
Cano, Ignácio. 2010. Racial Bias in Police Use of Lethal Force in Brazil. Police Practice and Research 11, 1: 31–43.Google Scholar
Castro, Alex. 2008. Pretos, pobres, e polícia. Liberal, libertário, libertino (blog). November 19. http://web.archive.org/web/20090131142258/http://www.interney.net/blogs/lll/2008/11/19/pretos_pobres_e_policia Google Scholar
Chevigny, Paul. 1995. The Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Conceição, Américo da. 2000. Author interview. Aracaju, Sergipe, April.Google Scholar
Costa, Haroldo. 1982. Fala crioulo. Rio de Janeiro: Record.Google Scholar
Costa, Haroldo. 2008. Fala crioulo. New edition. Rio de Janeiro: Record.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1968. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Markmann, C. L.. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.Google Scholar
Fausto, Boris. 1984. Crime e cotidiano: a criminalidade em São Paulo (1880–1924). São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Feltran, Gabriel de Santis. 2011. Fronteiras de tensão: política e violěncia nas periferias de São Paulo. São Paulo: Editora UNESP.Google Scholar
Ferreira da Silva, Denise. 2001. Towards a Critique of the Socio-Logos of Justice: the Analytics of Raciality and the Production of Universality. Social Identities 7, 3: 421–54.Google Scholar
French, John, and Fortes, Alexandre. 2012. Nurturing Hope, Deepening Democracy, and Combating Inequalities in Brazil: Lula, the Workers' Party, and Dilma Rousseff's 2010 Election as President. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 9, 1: 7–28.Google Scholar
Gay, Robert. 2010. Toward Uncivil Society: Causes and Consequences of Violence in Rio de Janeiro. In Violent Democracies in Latin America, ed. Desmond Arias, Enrique and Goldstein, Daniel M.. Durham: Duke University Press. 201–25.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Guimarães, Antonio Sergio A. 2003. Racial Insult in Brazil. Discourse and Society 14, 2: 133–51.Google Scholar
Handler, Richard. 2012. What I'm Reading: What's up, Doctor Goffman? Tell Us Where the Action Is Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18, 1: 179–90.Google Scholar
Hautzinger, Sarah J., 2007. Violence in the City of Women: Police and Batterers in Bahia, Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). 2010. Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD): características da vitimização e do acesso à justiça no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação IBGE.Google Scholar
Leeds, Elizabeth. 2007. Serving States and Serving Citizens: Halting Steps toward Police Reform in Brazil and Implications for Donor Intervention. Policing and Society 17, 1: 21–37.Google Scholar
Leite, Ricardo. 2000. Attorney. Author interview. Aracaju, Sergipe, April.Google Scholar
Lemgruber, Julita, Musumeci, Leonarda, Cano, Ignacio, Paula Miranda, Ana, and Travassos, Sonia. 2003. Quem vigia os vigias? Um estudo sobre controle externo da polícia no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Record.Google Scholar
Lopes, Carlos, and Moreira, Diva. 2005. Violěncia, segurança pública e cidadania. In Relatório do desenvolvimento humano: Brasil. Brasília: PNUD. 85–101.Google Scholar
Lucena, Eleonora de. 2012. Os livros pensam a violěncia. Folha de São Paulo, July 29. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrissima/1127085-os-livros-pensam-a-violencia.shtml Google Scholar
Mitchell, Michael, and Wood, Charles. 1999. Ironies of Citizenship: Skin Color, Police Brutality, and the Challenge to Democracy in Brazil. Social Forces 77, 3: 1001–20.Google Scholar
Neves, Paulo Sérgio da Costa, Rique, Célia, and Freitas, Fabio F. B.. 2002. Polícia e democracia: desafios à educação em direitos humanos. Recife: Edições Bagaço.Google Scholar
Paes-Machado, Eduardo, and Vilar Noronha, Ceci. 2002. Policing the Brazilian Poor: Resistance to, and Acceptance of, Police Brutality in Urban Popular Classes (Salvador, Brazil). International Criminal Justice Review 12: 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paixão, Marcelo. 2005. Manifesto anti-racista: idéias em prol de uma utopia chamada Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora DP&A.Google Scholar
Penglase, Ben. 2009. States of Insecurity: Everyday Emergencies, Public Secrets, and Drug Trafficker Power in a Brazilian Favela. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 32, 1: 47–63.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. 2009. Limited Black Confidence in Police. The Databank, July 30. http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=824 Google Scholar
Ramos, Silvia, and Musumeci, Leonarda. 2005. Elemento suspeito: abordagem policial e discriminação na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.Google Scholar
Rosemberg, André. 2010. Retrato policial: um perfil da praça de polícia em São Paulo (1868–1896). História 29: 95–115.Google Scholar
Roth-Gordon, Jennifer. 2009. The Language that Came down the Hill: Slang, Crime, and Citizenship in Rio de Janeiro. American Anthropologist 111, 1: 57–68.Google Scholar
Sankievicz, Alexandre. 2005. Políticas públicas para a redução dos índices de letalidade da ação policial. Report. Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados. http://bd.camara.gov.br/bd/handle/bdcamara/1635 Google Scholar
Sansone, Lívio. 2002. Fugindo para a força: cultura corporativista e “cor” na polícia militar do estado do Rio de Janeiro. Estudos Afro-Asiáticos 24, 3: 513–32.Google Scholar
Sansone, Lívio. 2003. Blackness Without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Santos, Sales Augusto de, Moreno Moreno, João, and Lúcia Bertúlio, Dora. 2012. O processo de aprovação do estatuto da igualdade racial. Brasília: INESP/Ford Foundation.Google Scholar
Secretária da Cultura do Estado de São Paulo. 2008. Racismo: São Paulo fala. São Paulo: Governo do Estado de São Paulo.Google Scholar
Seigel, Micol. 2012. What Brazil Does Well. New York times, March 29. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/29/brazils-racial-identity-challenge/the-us-should-follow-brazils-lead-on-affirmative-action Google Scholar
Silva, Hédio. 1998. Crônica da culpa anunciada. In A cor do medo: homicídios e relações raciais no Brasil, ed. David de Oliveira, Dijaci, Cristina Geraldes, Elen, Barbosa de Lima, Ricardo, and Augusto dos Santos, Sales. Brasília: Editora UnB. 71–90.Google Scholar
Smith, Christen. 2008. Scenarios of Racial Contact: Police Violence and the Politics of Performance and Racial Formation in Brazil. e-misféria 5, 2. http://hemisphericinstitute.org/eng/publications/emisferica/5.2/en52_smith.html Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael T., 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Telles, Edward Eric. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Telles, Edward, and Lim, Nelson. 1998. Does It Matter Who Answers the Race Question? Racial Classification and Income Inequality in Brazil. Demography 35, 4: 465–74.Google Scholar
Torres, Demóstenes. 2010. Relatório e parecer da Comissão de Constituição, Justiça e Cidadania. Brasília: Senado Federal.Google Scholar
United Nations. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 2012. Human Rights Council Adopts Outcome of Universal Periodic Review on the United Kingdom, India and Brazil. September 20. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12553&LangID=E Google Scholar
United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR). 2012. Países da Onu recomendam a abolição da Polícia Militar no Brasil. May 30. http://www.cartacapital.com.br/socie-dade/paises-da-onu-recomendam-a-abolicao-da-policia-militar-no-brasil Google Scholar
Vargas, João H. Costa. 2008. Never Meant to Survive: Genocide and Utopias in Black Diaspora Communities. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Vargas, João Costa, and Amparo Alves, Jaime. 2010. Geographies of Death: an Intersectional Analysis of Police Lethality and the Racialized Regimes of Citizenship in Saão Paulo. Ethnic and Racial Studies 33, 4: 611–36.Google Scholar
Waiselfisz, Julio Jacob. 2012. Mapa da violěncia 2012: a cor dos homicídios no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro/Brasília: CEBELA/FLACSO/SEPPIR/PR.Google Scholar
Willis, Graham Denyer. 2009. Deadly Symbiosis? The PCC, the State, and the Institutionalization of Violence in São Paulo, Brazil. In Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective, ed. Jones, Gareth A. and Rodgers, Dennis. New York: Palgrave Macmillian. 167–82.Google Scholar