Citation

Wolff MJ. Policing Soc. 2017; 27(5): 560-574.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/10439463.2015.1093478

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Two recent and highly ambitious public security initiatives in Brazil have claimed responsibility for dramatic reductions in homicides, while much of the rest of Latin America continues to suffer increasing violence. Boasting such unparalleled successes, the pacifying police units (UPPs) in Rio de Janeiro and the Pacto pela Vida (Pact for Life) in Pernambuco have been lauded as promising exportable models of public security for other violence-ridden cities across the continent. The two initiatives represent very different approaches to policing, however, which compels us to ask why they seem to be similarly successful, and if they would be effective if implemented elsewhere. Part of the reason for their success, I argue, is that unlike previous initiatives, the UPPs and the Pacto pela Vida appropriately identify and respond to very different logics of criminal violence. Criminal violence in Rio de Janeiro is driven by imperatives of territorial control, much like in civil war. In response, the UPPs have sought to 'pacify' and control territory as a first step in winning the loyalties of non-criminal residents. In Recife, by contrast, criminal groups rarely control territory, and violence follows a logic more similar to that of an infectious disease. The Pacto pela Vida, correspondingly, intends to identify and treat 'outbreaks'. The success of copying either formula elsewhere will depend on an appropriate identification of local criminal 'systems' and corresponding logics of violence.

Language: en

Keywords

criminal violence; Pacifying police units; pacto pela vida; public security