Abstract
This article explores the necropolitical foundations of police violence in Brazil via a genealogical approach of analysis of criminal codes, creation decrees, and other legal documents and insights from ethnographic research. In this paper I argue that antiblackness determines the role of the police in contemporary Brazil and has inscribed its place in law. Historically, the police had the legal duty to repress and punish enslaved people; but their role in imparting immediate justice persisted with expanded powers during the dictatorship and democracy’s social demands over the war on drugs. Through all these political and ideological transitions, the police have been resilient to change precisely because of their unique necropolitical power.
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
The dream, like the law, is the disguise of the wish,
and that disguise takes work
(Farley 2021: 88)
Introduction
In late 2010, the local government in Rio de Janeiro created a new branch of the military police called the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP). The UPP was created as part of the internationalization efforts of the city in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics. Authorities recognized the need to change the image of Rio de Janeiro as a chaotic and dangerous urban centre; this image was fuelled in part by a related narrative of an incompetent, lethal and corrupt police force. Certainly, the UPP seemed to appease national and international anxieties. What was unique about the UPP was its stated vision for policing based on ‘human rights, democracy and citizenship’.Footnote 1 With one of the world’s highest levels of fatal police violence (Hirschfield 2023), the introduction of these values suggested the possibility of change. For a moment, the UPP symbolized a renaissance of the military police in Brazil. Unsurprisingly, this dream was short-lived, and as many scholars have pointed out the UPP ended up creating local disruptions and new tensions within ‘pacified’ favela communities (Cunha and Silva Mello 2011; Mesquita and Amélia 2014; Misse 2014; Silva 2014; Valle Menezes 2014).
In July 2013, in the ‘pacified’ favela of Rocinha, Amarildo de Souza was declared ‘disappeared’ by his family (Carneiro 2013; The Independent 2013). Amarildo was in his forties. He was a father and a husband. He worked in construction. He was also a black man. After an investigation, it was revealed that police soldiers from the UPP Rocinha had tortured and killed Amarildo and disposed of his body. To this day, Amarildo’s body has never been recovered. This case sparked a national conversation about persisting police violence, specifically police killings, at odds with contemporary policing programs and education training based on ‘human rights, democracy and citizenship’. While BLM gained traction in the United States, Brazil reckoned with its own demons.
This was not the only controversy surrounding the UPP. Among others, cases of abuse and sexual harassment emerged (Freire 2010; Edson Alves 2014). The program received a string of criticisms from academics, activists and residents (Cano et al. 2012; Daniel Ganem Misse 2014; Denyer Willis and Mota Prado 2014). But the tragic episode of Amarildo’s ‘disappearance’ highlighted that, in Brazil, police violence is widespread and profoundly engrained in the institution’s modus operandi. Indeed, according to data from 2022, the police are responsible for an average of 17 deaths per day (Bueno et al. 2023). Since 2013, 43,171 people have been killed by the police (Bueno et al. 2022). The majority of those affected are men (99.2%) and black (84.1%). Importantly, the report also stressed that in 2022 the number of white victims of police lethality decreased while black victims continued to rise. As such, the police are a key state actor defining who lives and dies intentionally and violently in the country. Police in Brazil have such extraordinary force that, one might say, they hold in their hands—and through their guns—a unique necropolitical power (Amparo Alves 2018). This power is not restricted to a zone of extra-legality, it is instead tethered within institutional and legal frameworks (Bretas 1997; Trindade Maranhão Costa 2004; Costa and Thompson 2011).
In light of this discussion, I am moved by the following questions: In the context of Brazil, how does the law foster the institutional raison d’être of the police? How has the law been instrumental in the overwhelming normalization of police violence in contemporary Brazil? And more radically, can we see, enshrined in legal frameworks, the necropolitical power of the State?
In this article, I will argue that as an institution the police in Brazil have been historically built on an anti-black ideology of ‘order’. Furthermore, the institution has been incredibly resilient to change precisely because it finds legal and social legitimation within the law that officially eschews its place in Brazilian society.
As I shall suggest below, as a colonial force specifically created to control and punish slaves, the military police have always been the institution in charge of enforcing a very specific idea of ‘order’. This ideology of order, which we can name post-colonial in contemporary Brazil, has always been sustained by anti-blackness in the form of criminalization of Black life. Since their inception, the police have been delegated the task of surveillance, but also—and perhaps more importantly—punishment. Through all the country’s political and ideological transitions, the police have been an incredibly resilient institution. As such, Brazilian police forces have always accomplished quite fully their raison d’être. In light of this assertion, I argue that institutional and legal reforms have proven to be insufficient and only produce short-term effects. Just like the UPP, ‘soft’ policing initiatives and similar reforms often end up reinforcing police power that is tethered in this colonial logic.
However, even though legal frameworks have lost discriminatory language and overt racist tones, the structure, legal mechanisms, and creation degrees depict a stable institution that continues to function under the same anti-black logic and rationality of the past. By acknowledging the resilience of the police over the past centuries and the insufficiency of reformist approaches, I argue that it is only by taking seriously abolitionist claims (Kaba 2020; Davis et al. 2022; Gilmore 2022) that we can envision a shift in this form of state violence. In other words, police abolition can be the only hope to address the root causes of racialized police violence.
In this essay, firstly, I will outline concisely the research methods that inform this article. Secondly, I will address the question of the ‘neutrality’ of the law and draw connections to the necropolitical power of the police. Thirdly, I will turn my attention to the legal frameworks that have sustained police power throughout the different historical periods in Brazil. And finally, I will address how the police have resisted change, mainly by squashing calls that have emerged from within the institution.
A Methodological Preamble
To address the guiding questions of this article, I build on a genealogy of the military police in Brazil and ethnographic research. The latter was carried out during 2014–2015 in a UPP station in the southern area of Rio de Janeiro (Redacted). I accompanied soldiers on daily patrols and saw how they engaged with residents. I had countless informal conversations with them about the meaning of their work, everyday policing, and views about favela residents. I also collected information about their living conditions and position vis-à-vis the institution. Many ideas about the relation to the law that I espouse here are drawn from this fieldwork. For instance, history was an important refuge to talk about current ‘restrictions’ of police excesses (‘in the old days, we had real authority’ or ‘the law does not work on our side anymore’ were phrases that I heard many times by veteran police agents). Many soldiers expressed a lingering contradiction that they were on one hand not accountable, but/yet at the same time, the law weighed on their shoulders. Many expressed a tension between ‘human rights’ talk and their ‘duty’ to hold their place in Brazilian society (synthesized most clearly by the Brazilian popular saying: ‘A good bandit is a dead bandit’Footnote 2).
Secondly, I studied Brazilian federal archives, the creation decrees of police forces and the Criminal Codes that sustain contemporary police practices. Finally, I also reviewed a selection of news records to account for the social discussion generated by police violence. The genealogical method allows us to access the past to understand the present moment (Fassin et al. 2013). This approach meant navigating through archives and looking for shifting power dynamics (Kearins and Hooper 2002).
Two considerations of perspective: Firstly, Brazil has an incomplete cycle of policing, which means that all public security is dealt with by the Military Police (MP), and crime-solving is handled by the Civil Police (CP). This division crucially defines the history and dynamics of police forces. The relationship between the MP and CP is filled with rivalry; but also collaboration.Footnote 3 In this essay, I will only focus on the MP,Footnote 4 though I note that this potentially presents an incomplete picture because of the corresponding and intersecting role of the CP. Secondly, because Brazilian police forces are managed at the state level, I have studied the history of the MP in Rio de Janeiro, where I also carried out fieldwork. Again, this may present a limitation of analysis in not capturing other sites of MP history.
White ‘Neutrality’ of the Law and the Necropolitical Power of the Police
Critical legal studies have interrogated the role of the law in sustaining forms of oppression. Speaking about LGBTQ+ rights in United States, Dean Spade argues: “laws [that] arrange people through categories of indigeneity, race, gender, ability, and national origin to” work to “produce populations with different levels of vulnerability to economic exploitation, violence, and poverty” (Spade 2015: 2). Law and its outcomes have never been neutral. This production of vulnerability that Spade mentions can be found in different forms of state violence. Historically speaking, at least colonial, post-colonial and settler colonial contexts, the law has also had a white bias (Levinson and Smith 2012) that entrenches some forms of vulnerability aggravated by racial differences. In this sense, racial inequalities have been produced by legal frameworks. As Anthony Paul Farley argues, that law “is the monopoly on violence that is used to keep white-over-black” (Farley 2021: 84).
In parallel, Achille Mbembe’s articulation of necropolitical power (Mbembe 2019) allows us to interpret how the law can become an instrument within the State’s intentional management of death. The concept of necropolitics is born out of the insufficiency of the Foucaudian term biopolitics to account for how life is subjugated to the power of death. For Mbembe, there is an unequal distribution of this form of power, creating death worlds where “vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead” (Mbembe 2019: 92). To account for this terror, Mbembe invites us to “take a detour through the European imaginary itself as it relates to the critical issue of the domestication of war and the creation of a European juridical order” (Mbembe 2019: 76). Brazilian judicial order, as I will explore, replicates this same necropolitical logic.
Anthropologist Jaime Amparo Alves builds on these ideas and describes how the police, in practice, have created these death worlds in Brazil (Amparo Alves 2018). Indeed, the police have been a fundamental actor in demarcating geographies of death (Willis 2015). Following Mbembe’s work, within these disciplinary, biopolitical and necropolitical powers, the law has played a fundamental role in shaping and giving meaning to the police as a state institution. It is important to specify that what animates the necropolitical power of the police, as it is inscribed in law, is antiblackness. As Jung and Vargas state: “Antiblackness is an antisocial logic that not only dehumanizes Black people but also renders abject all that is associated with Blackness. This generalized abjection helps us grasp the ways in which, historically and contemporarily, Black people’s embattled bodies, spaces, knowledge, culture, citizenship, and humanity have served as the counterpoints to safety, rationality, belonging, and life. Unlike racism, which tends to focus on analogous experiences of oppression, antiblackness stresses the singularity of Black people’s dehumanization, antihumanization” (Jung et al. 2021: 8–9).
I argue here that we see the necropolitical power of the law in two different but parallel forms: (1) Criminalization of Black life: accounting for overt or covert legal mechanisms that perpetuate the oppression of non-white populations. We will see this unfolding historically in the Criminal Codes and records of social stigma, discrimination, and anxieties from white elites. And (2) The unlimitedness of police violence: Through explicit or implicit recognition, the law fosters or represses social behaviours and expectations. In the case of police violence, statistics of police lethality are a good indicator of the limits of the law. The current legal frameworks have been radically inefficient in curbing police lethality (and police violence more broadly). This wilful negligence should be alarming. Police violence as a pillar of police work can be found in MP creation decrees and the lack of effective frameworks to curtail this form of state violence. In sum, by considering legal documents within a broader moral economy of police violence,Footnote 5 we can understand how contemporary law perpetuates the necropolitical power of the police.
A Legal History of Police Violence
Before the Empire (1500–1821)
The Portuguese crown claimed the territory known today as Brazil in 1500. Soon after, economic production depended mainly on plantations (engenhos) that used native labour and increasingly enslaved people to work the land.Footnote 6 After 1695, gold mines were discovered, renewing the colony's relevance and propelling a massive influx of enslaved labour from Africa (Levine 1997). Rio de Janeiro, the nearest seaport to the mines, became the capital of the colony and underwent an important population surge. By 1800, two-thirds of Brazil’s population was of African origin, and many more were of ‘mixed origin’ (Levine 1997: 10). Enslaved people were perceived as ‘naturally’ unruly, immoral, and dangerous. Anxious elites quickly demanded an institution for surveillance and punishment: the police. As soon as the Portuguese crown arrived in Brazil (1808), they created the Intendência Geral da Polícia da Corte e do Reino made up of constables and justices of the peace. The Royal Police Guard (Guarda Real de Polícia) was created by decree in May 1809 and explicitly stated ‘good order and public peace’ (Bretas and Rosemberg 2013b). The Guarda Real, based on the Portuguese model of policing, followed its military fashion and was responsible for patrolling all areas of the city as well as imparting exemplary punishments (Table 1).
Since 1603 and during this period, Brazil has ruled according to the Portuguese legal framework, the Livro V das Ordenações Filipinas. The Livro V was religious and reflected the Monarch's centrality. It is/was aimed mostly at ‘infidels witchery, and unruly slaves’ and purveyed various punishments towards enslaved people. A brief example: A slave that comes to possess the weapon of their master will have their hands cut offFootnote 7 and those who assist or hide fugitive slavesFootnote 8 will be punished with expulsion or lashes. Coronel Miguel Nunes Vidigal, infamous for extreme violence, commanded the Guarda Real. He was depicted as the judge and a punisher, with no law above him.Footnote 9 He insistently pursued those who practised capoeira,Footnote 10 already considered a criminal activity. Overall, the force was subject to little or no control from other authorities.Footnote 11 The legal frameworks fostered the extreme violence of the police, and the police were a key institution that sustained the slave economy.
The inception of the police sees its roots in the omnipresent fear of Black existence, the threat of Black freedom and the idea of ‘order’ attached to the former two. The ideology of colonial order demanded a police force that would punish quickly and efficiently. Only by limiting Black life from the public sphere and crushing any possibility of Black freedom did the police find their purpose. Here lies their raison d’être. It is in this anti-black ideology that they anchor their necropolitical power.
Empire (1822–1889)
Brazil became a constitutional monarchy in 1822 (MacLachlan 2003). Tensions between Portuguese central powers and emerging Brazilian elites sparked this rupture, followed by competing interests of regional elites (Levine 1997). All and all, slavery continued to be the motor of the Empire’s economy until 1888, the year that marks the abolition of slavery,Footnote 12 and the Empire came to an end.
The legal framework during the Empire period saw substantial changes: it had a secular character and was shaped by modern ideas of crime deterrence that were developing in Europe. The Código Criminal do Império do Brasil (Criminal Code of the Empire) replaced the Livro V das Ordenações Filipinas. The new Criminal CodeFootnote 13 typified both crimes and punishments, regulating the latter in relation to the former. But the Criminal Code continues to reflect the greatest anxieties of its time: the slave threat, either by individual misbehaviour or by collective insurrection. The new code limited physical punishments now considered excessive or inhumane for everyone except for enslaved people and accomplices. A few examples: It prohibited “whipping, torture, iron marks, and other cruel punishments along with other mutilations and corporal punishments”, but exceptions applied for enslaved people.Footnote 14 This created two different regimes of punishment that practically followed racial lines.Footnote 15
To regulate the extreme cruelty of (white) private owners, the code delegated punishments to the police (lashes should not exceed 50 per day and the ‘slave would afterwards be returned to their owner’Footnote 16). The establishment of the Calabouço—a notorious prison in downtown Rio de Janeiro—reflects how the police were delegated physical punishments on rebels, fugitives, or misbehaved slaves. Here, police authorities would inflict lashes and other forms of torture established in the Criminal Code.Footnote 17O Calabouço reflects the radical anxiety that the black body produced via individual resistance or collective insurrection.
But the Criminal Code also reflected a concern for the free-poor and born-free populations. Legal mechanisms, such as the criminalization of vagrancy, regulated migration to the cities and significantly restricted freedoms.Footnote 18 Enslaved or non-slave populationsFootnote 19 that contravened acceptable public behaviour would bump against “the institutions of repression the elite instituted to keep them within certain limits” (Holloway 1993: p. 8). African religions were labelled as a ‘dangerous element of slave rebellions’ and were closely monitored and repressed (Borges 2001: 183). In general terms, practices based on African culture were codified as crimes, solidifying the connection between Blackness and criminality, via race itself or culture associated with it.
In 1831, the Corpo de Guardas Municipais PermanentesFootnote 20 (Permanent Corp of Municipal Guards) replaced the colonial Guarda Real de Polícia, but their raison d’être remained practically intact. However, a crucial change took place, the Municipal Guards became subordinate to the army. This unique structure, still in place today, has given the MP expanded powers while guiding their heavy military philosophy.
One of the influential figures of the time was Diogo Antonio Feijó, the Minister of Justice. Feijó was a true reformist and issued a series of orders that limited private forms of punishment he deemed ‘inhumane’. In the complicated enforcement of punishments at the Calabouço, he declared that “more than 50 (lashes) should be understood as excessive punishment and thus prohibited by law” (Holloway 1993: 115). But even with reformist attempts and the modernization of legal frameworks, the establishment of ‘order’ continued to be enforced through physical punishment and the criminalization of Black life.
The abolition of slavery in 1888 did not radically change the practices and premises of policing. As I shall discuss below, with new legal frameworks and the expansion of military institutions during the Republican period, the purpose of the military police would continue to envision Black life as the most prominent threat to post-slavery ideological order.
Republic (1889–1964)
While other colonies declared independence in previous decades (as early as 1804 in the case of Haiti and the 1820s in Central and South American countries),Footnote 21 Brazil finally became a Republic on the verge of the twentieth century, in 1889. During this period, there was a shift towards maintaining order through managing the ‘dangerous classes’. Given the social structure of the time, much of what was defined as ‘dangerous’ followed racial lines. So, even with the ushering in of a new constitution and penal code, police powers continued to work towards enforcing the existing ideology of order.
The first Republican Constitution was proclaimed in 1891. The new penal code was mainly concerned with maintaining the integrity and internal security of the Republic (naming sedition, conspiracy against the Republic, resistance, and contempt in the first chapters of the code). It also focused on vagrancy and ebriety,Footnote 22 prostitution, and behaviours considered a threat to the post-slavery moral and social order. Similarly, as before, black or mestiços (former slaves or born free) and their practices (for instance, feitiçeria) or circumstances (for instance, vagrancy if migrating to the cities) were disproportionally targeted. The new penal code criminalized spirit possession and herbal folk healing as illegal medical practices (classified as ‘crimes against public health’) and would result in a penalty or a term of imprisonment.Footnote 23 Vagrancy and the practice of capoeira continued to be classified as crimes,Footnote 24 given their disruption of public order.Footnote 25 This conception of public order involved open expressions of African culture and Black freedom more broadly. Candomblé, drum parties (batuques), and carnivals were viewed as acts against the public order, notably because they transgressed the appropriate moral behaviour (Borges 2001: 183). Following the trend of the previous decades, Blackness continued to be a synonym of crime.
Police forces remain reserves of the Army and face new changes at both local and national levels. The police had to secure the new socio-geographies in the shifting dynamic of the cities.
Favelas and quilombos (fugitive and former slave communities) quickly became targeted communities and were relegated to an outlawed limbo (Zaluar and Alvito 1998).
At the national level, after the Second World War, the Brazilian army was mostly influenced by the USA and a strong anti-communism ideology that was “hostile to any sort of populism” (Nunn 1972: 52). Indeed, the Cold War climate had its expected influence on Brazilian domestic politics. During this period, the military took political action three times—in 1945, 1954 and 1955—to intervene in times of political instability. In 1961, the army, the navy and the air force intervened to prevent the incoming president, João Goulart—viewed as a leftist by conservatives—from holding too much power (DHBBPós 1930. 2001). And in 1964, they launched a military coup d’état, putting an end to the democratic republic.
Dictatorship (1964–1985)
The 1964 coup ushered in two decades of military rule. The rapidly growing urban poor knew long before most middle-class citizens what it felt to be constantly repressed by police and military forces. However, the military regime solidified police violence as a legitimate form of policing and extended military rationalities to purview domestic matters.
The new Constitution, approved by the National Constituent Assembly, centralized decision-making and organized the armed forces. It also declared a state of exception while censuring political dissidence. While national security was the main concern, a growing concern for the trafficking of narcotics appeared at this point. As expected, the military police repressed public demonstrations, protests, and popular movements. But they were also in charge of containing the growing illegal economy of drugs. The repression of common crime, trafficking and political repression often overlapped. The working classes, including black and brown communities, continued to be targeted and harshly treated within the mass of ‘internal enemies’. We see at this point another critical intersection: the pre-existing association of ‘dangerous classes’ with Blackness and poverty was aggravated by the hysteria of narcotics. The figure of the ‘internal enemy’ alluded to throughout the dictatorship as the biggest threat of authoritarian order is conflated with the old figure of the ‘dangerous classes’. In other words, the dangerous classes now become the enemy.
This Constitution also broadened the jurisdiction of military courts, and in 1977, a Constitutional Amendment (known as the ‘April Package’) expanded military jurisdiction to state military police forces. This change—still in effect today—solidified the place of military police soldiers under a military jurisdiction.
During the dictatorship, the military police played a significant role in controlling, identifying, and punishing ‘internal enemies’, anyone who threatened national security. Their official role was reaffirmed as a reserve force of the Army.Footnote 26 However, many of the central qualities of the organization of the police had been established over the previous decades. For instance, Gétulio Vargas had created special branches that specialized in ‘public order’, focusing on political and social dissidence (Davis 1996).
The maxim made famous by the elites of the old regime remained intact: ‘social issues are police matter’Footnote 27 (Teresa Caldeira and Holston 1999). It was within this combination of harsh public repression and a concern for the growing illicit drug economy that the radical militarization of the police force took place. The police presence was not limited to ostensive policing but included intelligence and surveillance, looking for possible suspects and connections between local leaders and communist insurrection movements. Black movements were also targets of police repression during the dictatorship (Comissão Da Verdade Do Rio 2015). Broad political powers allowed a radical militarization of the police, who now had a renewed authority to enforce violence as a form of policing.
The eventual transition to democracy in the mid 1980s was made in “orderly, gradual and safe” fashion. An amnesty law was passed in 1979,Footnote 28 securing the regime's impunity but also allowing opposition leaders to re-enter the country. The military files were concealed for decades and have only been gradually opened, the National Truth Commission.Footnote 29 In 1984, the first election—while indirect—had both military and civil candidates. By 1985, democracy was re-established with the titanic challenge to deal with the many legacies of authoritarian rule.
Democracy (1985–Present)
By the time of re-democratization, the military police had a consolidated place in Brazilian society. As an adjacent body of the army, it also had well-established practices based on a militaristic style of maintaining ‘order’. While the promise of democracy would ensure a withdrawal from authoritative and discriminatory language, the transition to democracy did not greatly impact the police institution or policing practices.
The hallmark and consolidation of democracy came with the new Constitution of 1988, considered one of the most progressive in Latin America, and clearly breaking away from some military prerogatives (Zaverucha 1998, 2001). It outlined civil liberties and human rights as state responsibility (‘it is the duty of the state and a collective responsibility to assure public security’Footnote 30). However, as defined by the new Constitution, the structure, organization, and goals of the military police did not change from previous legislation. Its role was defined as ‘ostensive policing and the preservation of public order’; as an auxiliary (subordinate) reserve force of the army. Not surprisingly, contemporary police forces are highly militarized and have clear resemblances with the Army in practices, logic, discourse, and symbols.
But the 1988 Constitution not only failed to modify the military’s jurisdiction, but it expanded its purview. Firstly, it confirmed its own internal legislation, the Military Criminal Procedure Code. Internal (disciplinary) or criminal behaviour is investigated, prosecuted, and judged according to this Code.Footnote 31 Secondly, state military courts ensure teams of military officers and judges are primarily drawn from the military to judge crimes committed by military agents; all proceedings are private. As such, M.P. police accountability remains negiligible due to the secrecy of its judiciary processes and restrictions of civil overview.
Fear and insecurity across classes contribute to justifying police violence as a legitimate -and indeed only- means to control crime and community violence. To make matters worse, the period of democratic rule coincided with a steady rise in drug trafficking and territorial disputes. The war on drugs rhetoric and policies have contributed to recasting the figure of those worthy of state violence: from ‘dangerous classes’ to ‘internal enemy’ to the ‘bandido’. This concern has seen the use of military equipment in everyday policing, from rifles to war tanks (even in community policing such as UPP). In Rio de Janeiro, local governments have gone as far as incentivizing police killings by providing financial compensation to those agents that showed ‘acts of bravery’ in open confrontations.Footnote 32 Perhaps this has been the most expressive form of the police’s necropolitical power.
Policing in democratic Brazil has shown no signs of change in terms of disproportionate targeting and killings of Black people. The police have continued to spread terror among non-white communities on a daily basis.
With a legal architecture that still insulates the military police, accountability is rare, and public opinion often supports police violence as legitimate. Calls to impose the same old ideology of order based on the criminalization of Black life continue to press the police. And the police continue to be the state institution that ritually enforces it at whatever cost necessary.
The Police: It’s Raison D’être Inside Out
During colonial and imperial times, a specific punishment regime ruled enslaved people’s relationship with the state. While other categories (non-slave, poor) shaped the dynamics of security, the number of enslaved people made them the main preoccupation of the elites. The abolition of slavery did not radically change the legal duty of the police. With the shift towards ‘dangerous classes’ associated with criminal behaviour, non-white populations remained the target of most repressive and violent policing. For instance, rural migrants coming into cities naturally became vagrants and were considered criminals. Practitioners of magic or Afro-Brazilian culture were criminalized as well.
The Brazilian legal frameworks have mostly been imported from European thought and reproduced the same racist presumptions about crime. After the Republican period, there has been a gradual shift towards neutral language, but the structure and ethos of the police remain vastly untouched.
The police, once created to manage, control, and punish enslaved people—as well as other non-slave categories—experienced a continuing radicalization of their methodical violence during the decades that followed, culminating in the dictatorship. This trend has not been disrupted by re-democratization. On the contrary, police power has only solidified in the past three decades. The duty to impart immediate punishments has persisted with modern social demands over the war on drugs and related criminality. Statistics of police lethality during the past decades indicate a clear increase in police lethality after re-democratisation (Dal Santo 2022), which illustrates the extent of this logic and the legal protections the police continue to have.
The rise of violence during democracy—within a context of neoliberal policies and human rights discourses—has shaped a policing logic that enforces true terror towards the specific groups that have been deemed dangerous. In contemporary Brazil, the task of the police is to distinguish accurately those who can be punished or killed. It is within this logic that the popular expression mentioned before makes sense (‘A good bandit is a dead bandit’). The police have been granted the duty to direct state violence towards those who fit the image of the criminal. In this way, the history of policing has had specific implications for favela residents, which authorities have long considered as urban, sanitary, moral and security threats (Zaluar and Alvito 1998).
The Brazilian military police have always drawn their identity and sense of duty from the country's own history. The extraordinary resilience of the institution has also been sustained by social imaginaries about race and class. Indeed, in an anti-black context, their stability can be explained precisely because of their unique necropolitical power.
But race and class have also played a crucial role within the institution. Indeed, racist imaginaries have also been crucial in retaining the institutional structure and continue to shape soldiers’ experiences.
Since their inception, upper hierarchies were of direct Portuguese descent: white and issued from the elite classes. By contrast, after the abolition of slavery, many former slaves joined the military forces, and many fought in the Paraguayan War and other conflicts (Bretas and Rosemberg 2013a). These black, mulatto and non-white soldiers were imbued in a racist society that reproduced values that associated Blackness with threat. Recognizing this inner threat, the institution disciplined and punished soldiers regarded as potential seeds of disobedience. Furthermore, military codes were decisively focused on internal discipline, and even nowadays, express a real concern for internal disobedience, subversion, and indiscipline.Footnote 33 This focus has also been at the cost of ignoring the external relationship of the police with the public. As I saw during fieldwork, this fear lingers in everyday policing and the common sense of agents (many talk about it, insubordinação). Disciplinary codes and rules generate more preoccupation than Criminal Codes and national legal frameworks. Some supervisors demand to follow certain rules of decorum or behaviour strictly and insist on them wearing full military uniform or giving a military salute as they enter the room. Often, these requests ‘make no sense’ for soldiers. The imperative to keep soldiers ‘in their place’ relates to the striking distinctions between the upper hierarchies (oficiais) and the lower ones (praças). Current requisites for application to these pathways continue to reinforce this divide. While the oficiais must have higher education, praças are not required more than an elementary school diploma. The two regimes are separate, which means praças can hardly aspire to become an oficial. This division enhances the fear of insubordination and generalized mistrust of the upper hierarchy towards the lower one. Soldiers also feel this huge disconnect with the upper hierarchies. Unsurprisingly, these hierarchies continue to follow racial lines and illustrate how institutional racism has historically shaped the police inside out. Longstanding anti-black logics and ideas also influence how black and non-white soldiers adhere to conservative views that associate Blackness with crime and enforce police violence against black citizens.
If we consider both the criminalization of Black life and how the law has been instrumental in the unlimitedness of police violence, we can conclude that Brazilian legal frameworks have actively fostered and sustained police violence. The institutional ethos of the police has reproduced their raison d’être throughout the historical transitions in the country. Navigating through the criminal codes, creation decrees, other legal documents, and records of social stigma and discrimination reveal the roots of their raison d’être within the law.
For the past three centuries, calls for reform have been heavily suppressed. To this day, police agents have been expelled when considered to have challenged the institution.Footnote 34 The accumulation of police power, expressed in its contemporary legal architecture, reveals an intractable institution.
Final Thoughts
Can we think of the law as a place of radical change? The law could be a place of substantial change in the cartography of life and death in Brazil, but a necessary step would be to recognize history, create collective understandings, and envision true change based on moral commitments that challenge any form of oppression (based on race, class, gender, etc.). A combination of legal and socio-cultural shifts is then required to see radical change that would shift the culture of policing in Brazil.
Civil society in Brazil has slowly gained space denouncing abuses.Footnote 35 In front of police resilience to change, we find Black resistance movements. The moral climate of today is reframing police violence. If democratic institutions need to be rethought, the police are certainly a place to start. But reforms or the creation of new branches of community policing, such as the UPP, have proven not to attain sustained change or significantly diminish police violence. The legal architecture that fosters police power allows us to trace its resiliency.
Police abolition involves rethinking and remapping the role of alternative institutions that could offer new avenues for the state to engage with its population, including finding local solutions, community-based initiatives, and other non-punitive approaches to justice (Kaba and Ritchie 2022; Maher 2022). In the words of Anthony Paul Farley, “emancipation’s place is beyond the juridical horizon” (Farley 2021: 83–84).
The law, a reflection of its historical context and a mirror of moral values of the time, could foster change if–and only if–as a society, we truly reflected on the extent of anti-blackness at the heart of state institutions.
Notes
Decreto nº 42.787 de 06/01/2011.
For more on this expression, see (Lembruger et al. 2017). Also see (Redacted) for an analysis of how UPP soldiers understood human rights within the UPP.
For more on the CP, see (Willis 2015).
The history of the CP is somewhat criscrossed with the history of the MP. There is also joint actions carried out by CP and MP, and notably recent police massacres (Jacarezinho massacre) have been carried out by the CP (Lima and Translation by Clau Guimarães 2021; “Jacarezinho Massacre in Rio de Janeiro Is Reprehensible and Unjustifiable” 2021). It is important to note that some police statistics include both police forces.
Livro 5 Tit. 41: Do escravo ou filho, que arrancar arma contra seu senhor ou pai.
Livro 5 Tit. 63: Dos que dão ajuda aos escravos cativos para fugirem ou os encobrem.
The life of Coronel Vigidal was vividly portrayed in Manuel Antônio de Almeida’s novel Memórias de um Sargento de Milícia (Memoirs of a Police Sergeant), first published in 1852. In it he states ‘Mayor Vigidal was the absolute king, the supreme arbiter of everything concerning this branch of the administration. He was the judge that judged and distributed all punishments and at the same time, the guard that chased the criminals; at the reach of his immense height there were no witnesses, no proof, no reason, no judgement; he resumed everything himself; his justice was infallible; for his sentences, there was no appeal; he did what he wanted and nobody would challenge him. Ultimately he exerted a sort of police inquisition’ (Almeida 2012).
Capoeira is a traditional martial artform with African roots. Nowadays, it is common in Brazil (considered a martial art and a form of Afro-Brazilian cultural expression). Until the nineteenth century, it was considered a criminal activity.
It should be noted that the Guarda Real de Polícia has not been studied in depth by historians (Bretas and Rosemberg, 2013b).
The slave economy underwent a slow decline over the years: in 1850, the slave trade was prohibited; in 1871, the Law of the Free Womb was passed (Lei do ventre libre), freeing children born to slave mothers; the Sexagenarian Law (Lei dos Sexagenários) of 1885 freed slaves older than sixty years old; and finally in 1888, the Golden Law (Lei Áurea) abolished slavery, making Brazil the last country in the world to formally do so.
The code was instituted by the 16 December 1830 Law: Lei De 16 De Dezembro De 1830 Ementa: Manda executar o Código Criminal.
Chapter I establishes “Justifiable crimes” (6º Quando o mal consistir no castigo moderado, que os pais derem a seus filhos, os senhores a seus escravos, e os mestres a seus discipulos; ou desse castigo resultar, uma vez que a qualidade delle, não seja contraria ás Leis em vigor.).
Sentences of death and forced labour were handed down in cases of homicide and slave revolts. Free men could also be subjected to the death penalty if they contributed to slave insurrections or revolts.
Chapter I, Article 60 establishes: ‘If the accused is a slave, and he commits a crime that is not punished with the death or gales penalty, he will be condemned to lashes. After suffering them he will be returned to his master, who will be forced to burn him with an iron for the time that the judge designates. The number of lashes will be fixed in the sentence, but the slave will not be able to receive more than 50 lashes per day’.
It should be considered that Brazil was not dominated by a single logic of social and economic relations. Within the territory there were different slavery regimes (Williams 1930) that ruled the slave system economy and free labor.
The end of slavery coincided with the continuing expansion of the economy based on sugar plantations, so the living conditions of black populations did not radically change. Landowners, who profited from cheap labor, feared that former slaves would abandon the countryside for the cities. However, the Criminal Code classified vagrancy as crime, so mobility was greatly limited for those who wanted to enter the cities (Levine 1997: 10). The vagrancy law and the termo were part of a legal structure that supported the “weapons against free marginal” individuals and a form of forced labor recruitment (Huggins 1982: 324). The judicial structure was designed to perpetuate the slave labor conditions for free former slaves or the non-slave poor.
It is important to note that the master–slave dichotomist relationship does not provide a complete picture of the dynamics of nineteenth century Brazilian society. Even if slaves and former slaves were perceived as a significant threat, the free poor or non-slave poor also played a role in the complex tensions of the time. These non-slave poor were mainly drifters, domestic servants, low-level artisans and industrial producers, construction workers, transporters, and descendants of slave owners who were rejected for their maternal ancestors.
The Lei de 10 de Outubro de 1831.
This period includes the First Republic, ‘Era Vargas’ and democratic rule (1889–1964).
CAPITULO XII DOS MENDIGOS E EBRIOS- Art. 391.”.
CAPITULO III DOS CRIMES CONTRA A SAUDE PUBLICA.
CAPITULO XIII DOS VADIOS E CAPOEIRAS Art. 399.
Art. 402.
Paragraph four of the decree established that military police are instituted to maintain order and internal security, auxiliary of the army.
A questão social é caso de polícia.
The law that established Amnesty: Lei No 6.683, De 28 De Agosto De 1979. Concede anistia e dá outras providências.
The National Truth Comission was created by a decree signed by President Dilma Rousseff (who had herself been tortured during the dictatorial regime) through the LEI Nº 12.528, DE 18 DE NOVEMBRO DE 2011. Cria a Comissão Nacional da Verdade no âmbito da Casa Civil da Presidência da República.
Article 144 redefines the place of public security and the bodies that are in charge of administering it.
The code reveals a great concern for offenses such as dereliction of duty, desertion, cowardice, mutiny, insubordination, espionage (exclusive of military members) and burglary, theft, abuse of authority and torture (included in ordinary criminal law). Also see (Costa and Thompson 2011).
Brazilian police forces and the military in general have also been characterized by revolts, disobedience and subversion. The Guarda Real was dissolved after a group of soldiers demanded, among other things, the end of physical punishment within the force. Later, the Copacabana mutiny—the Revolta dos Marinheros—also called for internal changes related to humiliating punishments and disciplinary codes. These demands from soldiers or officials have been severely repressed by higher authorities.
In recent history, Coronel Ubiratan Ângelo was removed from his position in 2007 for publicly supporting the demands of soldiers.
Just to provide a few examples Mães de Maio (São Paulo) or Rede de Proteção e Resistência Contra o Genocídio (Rio de Janeiro).
References
Almeida, Manuel Antônio de. 2012. Memórias de Um Sargento de Milícias. Montecristo Publishing LLC.
Amparo Alves, Jaime. 2018. The Anti-Black City. Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil.
Bueno. 2022. Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública.
Bueno. 2023. Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. São Paulo: FBSP. ISSN 1983-7364.
Belchior Mesquita, Wania Amélia. 2014. “Quando o Trabalho é Desordem: As Demandas Dos Vendedores Ambulantes Com a Chegada Da UPP Ao Complexo Do Alemão.” DILEMAS: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 7 (4).
Borges, Dain. 2001. “Healing and Mischief: Witchcraft in Brazilian Law and Literature, 1890–1922.” In Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times, Edited by Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, Gilbert M. Joseph. Duke University Press.
Bretas, Marcos Luiz. 1997. Ordem na cidade: o exercício cotidiano da autoridade policial no Rio de Janeiro, 1907-1930. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco.
Bretas, Marcos Luiz, and André Rosemberg. 2013a. “A história da polícia no Brasil: balanço e perspectivas.” Topoi (Rio de Janeiro) 14: 162–73. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1590/2237-101X014026011.
Bretas, Marcos Luiz, and André Rosemberg. 2013b. “A História Da Polícia No Brasil: Balanço e Perspectivas.” Topoi (Rio de Janeiro) 14 (26): 162–73. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1590/2237-101X014026011.
Cano, Ignacio. 1997. “Letalidade Da Ação Policial No Rio de Janeiro.” ISER.
Cano, Ignacio, Doriam Borges, and Eduardo Ribeiro. 2012. “‘Os Donos Do Morro’: Uma Análise Exploratória Do Impacto Das Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) No Rio de Janeiro.” Rio de Janeiro: CAF - BANCO DE DESENVOLVIMENTO DA AMÉRICA LATINA.
Carneiro, Julia. 2013. “Amarildo: The Disappearance That Has Rocked Rio.” BBC News, September 18, 2013, sec. Latin America & Caribbean. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-24143780.
Comissão Da Verdade Do Rio. Relatório. 2015. CEV-Rio. 978-85-67728-02-5.
Costa, Arthur Trindade Maranhão, and Timothy Thompson. 2011. “Police Brutality in Brazil: Authoritarian Legacy or Institutional Weakness?” Latin American Perspectives 38 (5): 19–32.
Cowell, Bainbridge. 1975. “Cityward Migration in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Recife, Brazil.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 17 (1): 43–63. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/174786.
Cunha, Neiva Vieira, and Marco Antonio Silva Mello. 2011. “Novos Conflitos Na Cidade: A UPP e o Processo de Urbanização Na Favela.” DILEMAS: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 4 (3): 371–401.
Dal Santo, Luiz Phelipe. 2022. “Killing and Letting Die: Depicting the Brazilian Conundrum Between Police Killings and Private Lethal Practices.” In Guns, Gun Violence and Gun Homicides: Perspectives from the Caribbean, Global South and Beyond, edited by Wendell C. Wallace, 329–48. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84518-6_15.
Daniel Ganem Misse. 2014. “Cinco Anos de UPP: Um Breve Balanço.” DILEMAS: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 7 (3): 675–700.
Davis, Angela, Erica Meiners, Beth Ritchie, and Gina Dent. 2022. Abolition. Feminism. Now. Pinguin. https://www.booktopia.com.au/abolition-feminism-now-angela-y-davis/book/9781642592580.html.
Davis, Darien J. 1996. “The Arquivos Das Policias Politicais of the State of Rio de Janeiro.” Latin American Research Review 31 (1): 99–104.
Denyer Willis, Graham, and Mariana Mota Prado. 2014. “Process and Pattern in Institutional Reforms: A Case Study of the Police Pacifying Units (UPPs) in Brazil.” World Development 64 (December): 232–242https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.06.006.
Edson Alves, Francisco. 2014. “Após Estupros No Jacarezinho, Polícia Investiga Suposto Abuso de Poder de PMs.” O Dia, August 8, 2014.
Farley, Anthony Paul. 2021. “Toward a General Theory of Antiblackness.” In Antiblackness, edited by Moon-Kie Jung and João H. Costa Vargas. Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/antiblackness.
Fassin, Didier. 2009. “Les Économies Morales Revisitées.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 6/2009 (64e année): 1237–66.
Fassin, Didier, Isabelle Coutant, Fabrice Fernandez, Nicolas Fischer, Sébastien Roux, and Collectif. 2013. Juger, réprimer, accompagner : Essai sur la morale de l’Etat. Paris: Seuil.
Freire, Aluizio. 2010. “Abuso de Autoridade Em Favela Com UPP Preocupa Pesquisadores.” G1 Rio, May 8, 2010. http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2010/05/abuso-de-autoridade-em-favela-com-upp-preocupa-pesquisadores.html.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2022. Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Verso Books.
Hirschfield, Paul J. 2023. “Exceptionally Lethal: American Police Killings in a Comparative Perspective.” Annual Review of Criminology 6 (1): 471–98. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030421-040247.
Holloway, Thomas. 1993. Policing Rio de Janeiro: Repression and Resistance in a Nineteenth-Century City. Stanford University Press.
Huggins, Martha. 1982. “Social Control for Labor in Nineteenth-Century Pernambuco, Brazil.” Contemporary Crises 6: 315–31.
“Jacarezinho Massacre in Rio de Janeiro Is Reprehensible and Unjustifiable.” 2021. Amnesty International. May 6, 2021. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/05/brazil-jacarezinho-massacre-rio-de-janeiro-reprehensible-unjustifiable/.
Jung, Moon-Kie, and Vargas, João Helion Costa, eds. 2021. Antiblackness. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kaba, Mariame. 2020. “So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist.” LEVEL (blog). October 30, 2020. https://level.medium.com/so-youre-thinking-about-becoming-an-abolitionist-a436f8e31894.
Kaba, Mariame, and Andrea J. Ritchie. 2022. No More Police: A Case for Abolition. The New Press. https://thenewpress.com/books/no-more-police.
Kearins, Kate, and Keith Hooper. 2002. “Genealogical Method and Analysis.” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 15 (5): 733–57. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1108/09513570210448984.
Lembruger, Julita, Ignacio Cano, and Leonarda Musumeci. 2017. “Olho Por Olho? O Que Pensam Os Cariocas Sobre ‘Bandido Bom é Bandido Morto.’” CENTRO DE ESTUDOS DE SEGURANÇA E CIDADANIA (CESEC).
Levine, Robert M. 1978. Pernambuco in the Brazilian Federation, 1889-1937. Stanford University Press.
Levine, Robert M. 1997. Brazilian Legacies. M.E. Sharpe.
Levinson, Justin D., and Robert J. Smith, eds. 2012. Implicit Racial Bias across the Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511820595.
Lima, Tatiana, and Translation by Clau Guimarães. 2021. “Stop Killing Us! Jacarezinho Experiences Worst Massacre in Rio History #VoicesFromSocialMedia.” RioOnWatch (blog). May 8, 2021. https://rioonwatch.org/?p=65697.
MacLachlan, Colin M. 2003. A History of Modern Brazil: The Past Against the Future. Rowman & Littlefield.
Maher, Geo. 2022. A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete. Verso. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2571-a-world-without-police.
Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics. Theory in Forms. Durham: Duke University Press.
Misse, Michel. 2011. “AUTOS DE RESISTÊNCIA”: UMA ANÁLISE DOS HOMICÍDIOS COMETIDOS POR POLICIAIS NA CIDADE DO RIO DE JANEIRO (2001–2011).” Research. Rio de Janeiro: Núcleo de Estudos da Cidadania, Conflito e Violência Urbana Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Nunn, Frederick M. 1972. “Military Professionalism and Professional Militarism in Brazil, 1870-1970: Historical Perspectives and Political Implications.” Journal of Latin American Studies 4 (1): 29–54.
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1985. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835. Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1996. Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery. University of Illinois Press.
Silva, Luciane Soares da. 2014. “Now Lower the Sound: UPPS, Order and Music in the City of Rio de Janeiro.” Caderno CRH 27 (70): 165–179https://doi.org/10.1590/S0103-49792014000100012.
Spade, Dean. 2015. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv123x7qx.
Teresa P. R. Caldeira, and James Holston. 1999. “Democracy and Violence in Brazil.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (4): 691–729.
The Independent. 2013. “Where’s Amarildo? How the Disappearance of a Construction Worker Taken from His Home by Police Has Sparked Protests in Brazil,” August 4, 2013. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wheres-amarildo-how-the-disappearance-of-a-construction-worker-taken-from-his-home-by-police-has-sparked-protests-in-brazil-8745464.html.
Trindade Maranhão Costa, Arthur. 2004. Entre a Lei e a Ordem. FGV Editora. http://editora.fgv.br/entre-a-lei-e-a-ordem.
Valle Menezes, Palloma. 2014. “Os Rumores Da ‘Pacificação’: A Chegada Da UPP e as Mudanças Nos Problemas Públicos No Santa Marta e Na Cidade de Deus.” DILEMAS: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 7 (4): 665–684.
Williams, Mary Wilhelmine. 1930. “The Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Brazilian Empire: A Comparison with the United States of America.” The Journal of Negro History 15 (3): 315–36. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2307/2713971.
Willis, Graham Denyer. 2015. The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime, and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil. Univ of California Press.
Zaluar, Alba, and Marcos Alvito. 1998. Um século de favela. FGV Editora.
Zaverucha, Jorge. 1998. “The 1988 Brazilian Constitution and Its Authoritarian Legacy: Formalizing Democracy While Gutting Its Essence.” Journal of Third World Studies 15 (1): 105–24.
Zaverucha, Jorge. 2001. “Poder Militar: Entre o Autoritarismo e a Democracia.” São Paulo Em Perspectiva 15 (4): 76–83. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-88392001000400009.
Funding
Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Spesny, S.L. The Law as a Necropolitical Tool: A Genealogy of Police Violence in Brazil. Crit Crim (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09763-7
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09763-7