Abstract
Rates of imprisonment have long been used to compare levels of punitiveness among nations. The lower they are, the more tolerant a society is considered to be. Some authors have argued this may be misleading though, since it does not provide us with a full picture of penal practices and their harshness. In this chapter, I explore two aspects of the Brazilian case which can contribute to this debate on punishment and society. In so doing, I highlight two common punitive practices in the Global South, despite them being overlooked in the Northern literature. Drawing on secondary and official data, I first analyze the high levels of homicide in the country and the lack of state intervention—be it punishment or mere investigation. I then turn my attention to the police lethal action, another systemic practice in peripheral countries. While the first scenario indicates the so-called ‘absence of the State’ (and the police) constitutes a condition for the reproduction of tens of thousands of homicides per year, state interventions can also be problematic, resulting in other thousands of deaths. Here lies a duality of the Brazilian state: killing and letting die. In both contexts, guns are the instrument used in the vast majority of the killings. Therefore, guns are used both as means of solving private conflicts and as the state exercise of power, meaning that they play a key role in the Brazilian society, particularly in terms of producing (dis)order and social control.
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Notes
- 1.
This category is used by the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, and encompasses intentional homicides, deaths following a robbery (this situation is codified as a specific action in Brazil, called latrocínio), bodily injuries followed by death (which is also a different category of crime in Brazil), and deaths resulting from police intervention. In other reports, such as the Mapa da Violência, organized by Waiselfisz, ‘homicide’ is used as a synonym of this group of ‘intentionally caused violent deaths’. Another important aspect to be highlighted here is that so-called ‘violent deaths with undetermined cause’ are not considered as ICVD, though they are mostly actual homicides wrongly categorized—which is believed to happen in over 70% of the cases (Brazil, 2017: 48–49). Therefore, the absolute numbers and rates of ICVD are certainly underestimated.
- 2.
Data retrieved from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s International Homicide Statistics database, and organized by The World Bank. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?view=map. Accessed on 23 November 2020.
- 3.
Only nine among 39 Latin American and Caribbean countries with available data had a higher ICVD rate than Brazil, those all being Caribbean, apart from Venezuela. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.P5?locations=ZJ&view=map. Accessed on 23 November 2020.
- 4.
Homicide is the most common ‘category’ of death for people aged between 15 and 24 (Brazil, 2017: 7).
- 5.
The homicide elucidation rate corresponds to the level of homicide investigation in which a formal charge is filed by the Prosecution—which is to say, this indicates the level of cases in which the Prosecution is able to accuse an specific person as the crime perpetrator.
- 6.
In the first semester of 2020, police killed 3,181 people in Brazil, which is more than in the first semester of the previous year (3,002) (FBSP, 2020: 84).
- 7.
This rate is significantly reduced when the deaths of plainclothes policemen are considered (Dal Santo, 2020, p. 173).
- 8.
This has included, for instance, the removal of corpses and the collection of bullet casings from the ground (Willis, 2015).
- 9.
As per the vast majority of cases analyzed by Misse and his colleagues (2011: 33), policemen declared ‘the police were on routine patrols or on operation, near or in a region controlled by armed groups of drug dealers, when they were shot and then retaliated against ‘unjust aggression’. After the shooting ceased, they found one or more ‘elements’ [the supposedly criminals] shot and laid on the ground, usually with weapons and drugs nearby; and [the policemen then] provided immediate assistance, taking them [wounded civilians] to the hospital. In almost all autos de resistência, it is reported that the victims died on the way to the hospital, and the Medical Service Bulletins subsequently attested the victim was admitted to the hospital already dead. There are also cases where [it is argued] the shooting started after an assault, or attempted assault, when the criminals responded to police intervention, but these [cases] are the minority’.
- 10.
Cano and Fragoso (2000) identified only 12 cases, among 301 analysed by them, of forensics at the crime scene.
- 11.
I am not here considering Federal police.
- 12.
I am particularly thankful to Jairton Ferraz Júnior for having stated this prevention tip in a paper co-authored by us (Dal Santo & Ferraz Jr, forthcoming).
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Dr. Wendell C. Wallace for kindly inviting me to contribute to this important and relevant collection. I am also thankful to Laurence Hutchence, Caitlyn McGeer and Ian Loader for their extremely helpful and thorough feedback.
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Dal Santo, L.P. (2022). Killing and Letting Die: Depicting the Brazilian Conundrum Between Police Killings and Private Lethal Practices. In: Wallace, W.C. (eds) Guns, Gun Violence and Gun Homicides. Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84518-6_15
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