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Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas
71 | 2013 SPP 71
Edição electrónica URL: http://journals.openedition.org/spp/918 ISSN: 2182-7907
Editora Mundos Sociais
Edição impressa Data de publição: 1 março 2013 ISSN: 0873-6529
Refêrencia eletrónica Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas, 71 | 2013, « SPP 71 » [Online], posto online no dia 05 março 2013, consultado o 17 maio 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/spp/918
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© CIES - Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia 1
SUMÁRIO
Micro and macro sociological causes of violent atrocities Randall Collins
Violência na escola, processos de socialização e formas de regulação João Sebastião
Violências nas escolas: decifrai-me ou vos devoro Cândido Alberto Gomes, Adriana Lira, Delcimara Batista Caldas, Diogo Acioli Lima e Rosilene Beatriz Lopes
Safety and peaceful coexistence policies in Latin American schools: human rights perspective Ana María Rodino
School bullying Peter K. Smith
The evolution of drug trafficking and organized crime in latin america Bruce Bagley
Violence, organized crime, and illicit drug markets: a Canadian case study Stephen Schneider
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Micro and macro sociological causes of violent atrocities Causas micro e macrossociológicas de atrocidades violentas Causes micro- et macrosociologiques des atrocités violentes Causas micro y macrosociológicas de atrocidades violentas
Randall Collins
1 To examine the structures that cause violent atrocities, it is useful to begin with a historical instance. I have chosen an example which contains a range of kinds of violence, some more extreme, more cruel, than others, but all within a short period of time. Cruelty is variable; it does not happen every minute, even in social settings where it may be culturally approved; and at some moments it happens where it is not approved. Everything has multiple causes, and these conditions must intersect at a particular time and place if anything is to happen. Cruelty has both small local micro- dynamics and large macro-sociological conditions, and these together determine the fateful moments when cruelty will happen or does not happen. Long-lasting structural conditions are not enough; because of the micro-component, cruelty when examined closely has a contingent quality, although as a sociological theorist I would prefer to consider this as its time-dynamics.
2 My example is the most destructive race riot in US history. It took place in New York City during four days in July 1863 (Asbury, 1928: 87-173). It is sometimes called the New York draft riot, since the instigating cause was the compulsory draft of troops for the Federal army, just then in the midst of the Civil War against the slave states of the South. President Lincoln, who had recently emancipated the slaves, and the Abolitionists, were unpopular with the Irish immigrant population who lived, mostly in poverty, in the lower part of Manhattan. The draft was particularly unpopular since it allowed wealthier citizens to buy their way out of conscription. In New York, the conflict pitted Anglo-Protestant middle and upper classes against lower-class Irish Catholics. The Irish were prepared to fight; they were already organized in neighborhoods political clubs or gangs, which often brawled with each other, and which regularly fought with the police, especially at election times. Irish patrimonial
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organizations, which the Anglos regarded as corrupt, struggled over control of city politics. Only recently a reform had centralized the police under control of Anglo elites; this had resulted in violent struggles between rival groups of police and their supporters in 1857, only six years earlier. The Irish were well mobilized to resent what they saw as another imposition of Anglo-Protestant power, and to strike back against the draft.
3 The first day of riots began by massive crowds, numbering around 10,000, marching uptown to attack the headquarters of the draft board where the selection was taking place. At first the crowds had success, forcing small numbers of police to retreat, occupying and burning two official buildings of the draft and a state armory. The crowd then moved on to find new targets, for a riot needs action to sustain itself and a crowd which is doing nothing soon falls apart. But the next targets chosen were better defended; repeated assaults on the main Abolitionist newspaper, The New York Tribune, were driven back; and a march on police headquarters was met by a police counterattack. Although the police numbered no more than a few hundred against crowds of many thousands, the police attacked in a determined phalanx wielding clubs, and after a short 15 minute battle, forced the crowd to flee. How was this possible, that such small numbers could prevail, and without the use of guns? Clubs could be quite deadly, and contemporary descriptions claim the cops ferociously broke heads and killed rioters with their blows. Yet the rioters were similarly armed, also carrying a small number of guns — which however were not very effective in the crowded streets.
4 Here we must invoke a general principle, which I have documented in my book, Violence. A Micro-Sociological Theory (Collins, 2008). Winning or losing in a violent conflict is first of all a matter of who establishes emotional dominance; that side wins which holds together better, keeping up greater solidarity, and taking the initiative away from its opponent; emotional dominance comes first and makes possible physical dominance. Thus 100 police smashing the front of the crowd of thousands in a narrow street were able to turn its march into a disorderly retreat, leaving many luckless rioters open to being clubbed while they were stumbling and running away.
5 This pattern was repeated in numerous battles between crowds and police during the next days. Some of the rioters responded with better organized tactics; they took up defensive positions on rooftops, from where they could throw barrages of stones, causing many casualties among police. Army troops began to arrive on the second day and to use artillery against the crowds; when rioters retreated to defensive positions in upper windows and rooftops, the authorities developed an effective combined arms tactic of police clearing the building with their clubs, driving the rioters into the streets where they could be shot. On the second day, rioters set up European-style barricades, similar to those in 1830 and 1848 in Paris; but again the police and army attacked with superior weapons and superior energy and destroyed the amateur fortifications. Losses were heavy: during four days, police and army suffered 50 killed and over 1000 wounded; rioters lost 2000 killed and 8000 wounded, including many women and children — the bulk of the crowds being below the age of 20.
6 Despite this string of defeats, the riot continued, since there were numerous crowds throughout lower Manhattan, perhaps totaling 50,000 participants, who flowed away from the points of police strength to attack undefended targets. This is another general principle of violence: most violence is successful by finding weak victims. Thus rioters successfully attacked and burned several isolated police precinct stations, left largely
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unmanned because the police had been called away to muster in a few major actions. The homes of well-known citizens, such as the Mayor, the Postmaster, the newspaper editor, were attacked and burned if there were little guard. One must conceive of a riot as a temporary community of shared consciousness which can keep itself together only if it has attainable goals — targets where it can gain victories, where it can establish its own emotional dominance and keep up its emotional energy. The side in the conflict which is generally losing — and this was the condition of the rioters whenever they met the police and the troops after the middle of the first day — tends to split off to seek easy targets. At first these were clear symbols of their enemies, upper class homes nearby on their line of march which were burned or looted, even as rioters retreated from the police. It was in this context that the riot began attacking negroes.
7 Here again the riot began with official targets and proceeded to opportunistic attacks on exposed individuals. On the first afternoon, as attacks on the Abolitionist newspaper and other official targets were thwarted, a crowd attacked the Colored Orphan Asylum; most of the children escaped, but the building was looted and then burned, and one small negro girl who had been left behind was killed. Small groups of rioters began to invade hotels, restaurants, even bars and brothels in the lower-class part of the city, seeking negro servants to attack. Negro homes were burned, and negroes on the streets were beaten and hung. These were easy targets, not only because the negroes offered little resistance, but because negro areas were dispersed among the Irish slums — in fact, the poorest of both races tended to live in the same place, so the rioters had the emotional comfort of fighting on their home turf. On the second and especially third days of the riot, attacks on negroes became the main success of the rioters.
8 These were displays of ritualistic cruelty. Isolated negroes were surrounded by crowds which beat them repeatedly and dropped heavy stones on their heads; women, who made up a minority of the crowds, came forward on these occasions to stab the bodies, to pour oil into the wounds and set them on fire. Here we are unquestionably in the presence of deliberate cruelty. Sociologically we should analyze the emergence of cruelty in the time-dynamics of the crowd’s action, the temporal process by which the crowd prolonged its focus of attention on those places where it felt itself most dominant, its little bubbles and pockets of victorious emotion. Violence against isolated negroes was gratuitous, prolonged, overkill; bodies that were dead or unconscious nevertheless were repeatedly mutilated; burned bodies were hanged. The symbolic significance of these bodies as rallying-points for the crowd is shown by incidents which culminated the last day of rioting; the last big mob, totaling 5000 — the last time rioters were able to assemble in large numbers — hung a number of negroes along 8th Avenue. Army troops fired artillery into the crowd and drove them away, and cut down the negro bodies hanging from street lamps. When the army moved on, the mob returned to re-hang the bodies; eventually the police returned, took possession of the area, cut down the bodies and removed them. The trophies of battle gone, the riot finally dispersed and petered out.
9 There are plenty of instances of cruelty throughout the riot. By modern standards, we would regard firing artillery into a crowd to be cruel, and having one’s head beaten in by a policeman’s massive club would also be singled out by the modern media; casualties of women and children in these mêlées are shocking to us. Burning defenseless negroes no doubt seemed especially cruel even at the time, because it was prolonged and deliberate. But rioters too had been burned, chiefly on the first
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afternoon, when in the last of the crowd’s big victories, the state armory had been captured. While rioters were upstairs ransacking the weapons, a police counter-attack outside the building caused a panic; fearing the police might recapture the building, rioters set the downstairs floor on fire, burning hundreds of rioters who had barricaded themselves in upstairs. The fact that the crowd itself had started the fire was probably not appreciated at the time; the rioters no doubt considered the horrible deaths of their companions who had jumped from the burning roof, as the responsibility of the police. These are the emotional dynamics of a violent situation; if it is prolonged over a period of time — in this case, hours of tension stretching into several days — emotional and cognitive polarization sets in, both sides seeing the other as increasingly evil and inhuman; the perceived cruelty of the enemy becomes the incentive to practice cruel revenge, leading to a cycle culminating in the battle over the charred bodies of hanged and mutilated negroes on the third day of the riot.
10 Cruelty must always be located in time-dynamics — in the build-up of emotional polarization, and in the process of finding weak victims to keep a crowd mobilized when it no longer can prevail against the official targets with which it began. In fact the first victims of the crowd’s ritualistic violence were isolated policemen and soldiers, caught away from their mass formations on the first afternoon; it was later, when police in phalanxes were no longer vulnerable targets, that torturing negroes became the crowd’s chief preoccupation. Cruelty is not constant over time; it has its peak moments. These same Irish had lived in New York City with the negroes peaceably until those moments arrived — a pattern reminiscent of the ethnic atrocities in Bosnia in the 1990s.
11 Yet, although cruelty has its micro-dynamics, there is a structural aspect as well. Not all riots turn to ritual mutilation, torture, and prolonged battles over hanging corpses. When it is that violence upon one’s perceived enemies is more prolonged, ritualistic, and pointedly symbolic? By historical comparison, the intensity of cruelty is greater where groups are separated from each other by strongly ritualized boundaries. The archetype are tribal societies, which keep up strong internal solidarity; living in close proximity, in dense networks closed to outsiders, engaged in collective activities that leave little room for individualism or cosmopolitan connections, these are societies of a high degree of Durkheimian solidarity, a strong collective consciousness and sense of its own identity (Durkheim, 1964 ] Black, 1998). Morality is tight but local, demanding commitment of the individual in support of the group, but lacking moral sympathy with outsiders regarded as scarcely human. In such segmentary societies, ritualized boundaries are constantly being enacted against neighbouring tribes; the nearest tribe is also one’s worst rival and enemy. It is true that enmity among segmented societies is not constant, and relationships with neighbouring groups can be mixed with ambiguous exchanges. Thus even where the structure promotes hostility, the contingencies of everyday interaction often contradict the facade of ferociousness.
12 In part this is because violence in tribal societies is not usually very effective, since military organization is low, and mutual suspicion keeps both sides from exposing themselves when they are isolated and weak. But although victims in tribal warfare may be comparatively few in any one fight, they are celebrated with great ferocity. Indeed, the ferocity serves to dramatize the importance of the victory because success against an enemy is so episodic and uncertain. In tribal societies, captives may be
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tortured at length in collective ceremonies which assemble the group and thus serve as Durkheimian rituals of group supremacy (Collins, 2004; 2008). The death of an enemy in a tribal vendetta is celebrated with joyful dancing, and even a woman or a small child can be a suitable victim when — as if often the case — tribal warfare is too incompetent to score a real military victory. Occasionally through stealth an undefended enemy village may be taken, in which case a total massacre can happen — headhunters in the Philippines, for instance, prefer to attack when the enemy is asleep (Rosaldo, 1980). Group identity is so strong that categories of noncombatants are not singled out in the modern manner, and massacres of women and children evoke no moral qualms, although under some circumstances it may be considered a practical policy to take some of them as slaves, or even eventually to adopt them into one’s own side to fill gaps left by the dead. Here, what by modern standards would be considered extreme cruelty is not locally recognized as such, and even is celebrated as the group’s glory. This is the ancient morality that Nietzsche (1956 ]) perceived, where there is no standard of sympathy outside one’s own ranks, and good is equated with collective dominance.
13 The exemplars of ritually segmented societies are simple tribes of the pre-state period, but similar structures exist inside historically more complex societies where residence and economy are segregated into local ethnic enclaves. It has often been noted that modern urban gangs are like artificially constructed tribes, practicing honorific vendettas and defending their turf against their nearest neighbours; gangs construct boundaries through initiation rites and symbolic emblems of identity such as graffiti, or handsigns which are used to provoke battles. Gangs build self-contained islands of purely localistic morality, dramatizing their ferociousness against their enemies with threats of exemplary cruelty, although indeed much of this is bluster and bragging which they rarely are competent to carry out. The Irish who joined in the 1863 New York draft riot were not ordinarily a unified group; most of the time they identified with their smaller neighbourhood gangs, fighting periodically with other Irish gangs, for the most part using clubs and stones. Localistic fighting of this sort tends to become routine, especially when it happens inside the larger context of a modern society; and the intra-Irish gang fights, although they caused many injuries and a few deaths, were not on the whole known for extreme ritualistic cruelty such as mutilating and hanging burned bodies. To explain this higher level of cruelty we need an additional cause.
14 Again historical comparisons reveal the structural pattern: ritualized public displays of cruelty upon helpless victims are most strongly institutionalized in societies which combine hierarchic stratification with strongly ritualized group membership. Such are the societies of caste or estate, where honorific aristocrats demand extreme deference from peasants or slaves, and where intermediate classes of gentry, priests, merchants, or craftsmen guard their own ritual boundaries and demand what deference they can from those below. Historically these are the type of society in which power and wealth are most unequal; unlike tribal societies (or gangs) which are relatively flat internally and do their fighting horizontally, we have here a society in which everyday life is vertical, imposing deference upon underlings. But both egalitarian tribes and hierarchies of status groups (to use Weber’s term) have this in common, that both of them have a high degree of Durkheimian social density: everything is highly visible, no one is anonymous, the force of public attention is on everyone all the time. In a ritualized hierarchic structure emotional dominance is always at issue; upper classes are full of pride and arrogance, those below them have varying diets of humiliation,
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with opportunities to pass it along to someone else even lower. These are the societies in which public executions are like carnivals, gaudy displays of torture, mutilation, and prolonged death, even punishment after death. In the long struggles between Scotland and England from the 13th through the 18th centuries, for instance, rebellious chieftans would not only be hanged but their heads displayed on the city walls on pikes (Mackie, 1978). It has been argued that these forms of public cruelty were calculated displays; since government power was intermittent and most resistance could not be stopped, authorities made the most of the few malefactors they could catch for token displays of terrifying power. (This is similar to the analysis of Helbling, 2006, of pre- state violence generally.) There is an element of truth in this, but we should not forget the moral context: by the 20th century complex societies preferred to hide away the ultimate powers of coercion and everyone would be shocked by displaying the bloody head of even the worst child-murderer. In historical perspective of previous societies, a remarkable thing about the Nazi death camps was that they were kept secret; 13th century Mongols (and many other peoples) conquering a city had their death camps in public, and piled up mounds of skulls to brag about the deed. This is not just a change in the calculating power of states; it is a change in the social boundaries of morality, from those in which cruelty on proper occasions was a public ritual celebrating the stratified public order, but in modern times changing into a new form of morality in which coercion, although still present, is hidden as much as possible, and cruelty is now considered to be immoral.
15 Where do the Irish crowds stand in this perspective, when in New York of 1863 they engaged in ritualistic killings with prolonged torture, mutilation, and public display? The Irish had endured years of treatment as a despised lower caste, even regarded by the Anglo-American elite as a separate race, the “black Irish” — cut off by their poverty, their Catholicism, their un-puritanical customs and even their local success in controlling politics in lower Manhattan. The draft riots from the outset breathed an atmosphere of resentment against hated elite. The New York Irish, too, were out of harmony with the moral stance of the social elite engaged in an altruistic Christian crusade to free the slaves. From our modern perspective, this puts the Irish even more in the wrong; but in terms of their local social structure, their allegiance was to their own group; their attacks on the Abolitionist newspaper make it clear that the militant altruists who had started the war were regarded not only as alien but as persecutors of the Irish, trying to close down their saloons and brothels. Irish tribal mentality was only then taking steps towards unification among themselves, the separate gangs cooperating in the huge crowds which fought against the draft boards and the city elite.
16 One further puzzle is why the most ritualistic cruelty in the 1863 riot was carried out by the Irish, rather than by the police and the army (although we could see cruelty in the tactics of the latter as well). In a hierarchic caste society, most of the ritualistic cruelty is downwards; it is the aristocrats and their agents who do most of the torturing, mutilating, beheading, and displaying mangled bodies (Black, 1998). The upper classes control the means of military and political mobilization, and most of the means of ritual assembly as well. It is the transition to modern structures that enables political violence by the lower classes; democratization and urbanization opened up possibilities to mobilize on a larger political scale; upward resentment could be vocalized culturally, and resistance mobilized. Hence the fury of the Irish attack on upper-class institutions in New York, when a large-scale issue — the military draft that threatened all of them
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— gave them incentive to overcome their inter-tribal antagonisms and act in unison against a culturally alien enemy. If we think of democracy, not as an ideal form, but as an actual historical process of mobilizing the previously un-mobilized, we must recognize that it has generated plenty of opportunities for cruelty, especially in its early phases. Michael Mann, in The Dark Side of Democracy (2005), gives comparative evidence that the massacres of modern ethnic cleansing happen in populist democracies, which I would interpret as the combination of democratic mobilization with Durkheimian ritualistic enclaves prone to moralistic boundary violence. Thus it was the Irish in New York, precisely at the moment that they were breaking out of their immigrant ghettos into larger political participation that engaged in the widest outbreak of ritualistic cruelty.
17 But if structurally based resentment was against the Anglo upper classes, why did the negroes bear the brunt of the ritualistic cruelty? One could argue that lower groups displace their anger against those even lower; but this does not capture the episodic nature of the situation of those rapidly moving hours. In fact the crowd did most of their fighting with the police and the soldiers; only 20 negroes were hanged, but these murders were so spectacularly cruel — so spectacularly ritualistic — that they tend to monopolize our interpretation of the riot. But early in the riot, the Irish mobs made similar ritualistic attacks on whites: prolonged beating of the police commissioner who was arrogant enough to ride his horse alone into a rioting crowd, or stabbing and burning small numbers of soldiers who were overwhelmed by a large crowd while reloading their guns. But the white authorities for the most part organized effectively to win their confrontations; the negroes received the brunt of it because they became the easiest victims for the crowds to dominate; and they did bear a symbolic relation to the purpose of the riot, since the military draft and the entire war was perceived by the Irish as a movement to free negro slaves. The targets of ritualistic cruelty, especially in modern or modernizing situations, are episodically chosen, and what happens to them cannot be explained simply by long-standing cultural prejudices. Of course prejudices and hostile stereotypes exist, but violence is hard to carry out except when situational conditions are favorable. In almost every instance where modern ethnic massacres have taken place, not only were there currents of cultural hostility, but also considerable pragmatic success of these same groups in living peacefully near each other.
18 I have analyzed one form of cruelty, arising from ritually bounded social groups, where altruistic morality does not extend beyond the boundaries of one’s own enclave, and deliberate public cruelty to enemies is a ritual of group solidarity. Historically, the antidote to this form of cruelty is structural change, which dissolves dense groups and rigid boundaries into a fluid network of cosmopolitan contacts. To be sure, the transitional period of democratization is a dangerous one, creating opportunities for episodes of ritualistic cruelty on a mass scale (Mann, 2005). But when the era of Durkheimian mechanical solidarity passes, so should the era of Durkheimian ritualized public cruelty. Durkheim (1964 ]) thought that the large-scale trend, as societies became more complex and differentiated, was towards humanitarian identity on a global scale, what Talcott Parsons (1964) called universalism. It is because movements towards universalistic altruism have become widespread, especially among the educated classes since the 20th century that our standards of what is cruelty have expanded: we have formulated many more things as cruel than our ancestors would have recognized. It is useful to recognize this, because as sociologists we should be able
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to explain ourselves, including our most idealistic aspects. Sociology would be glaringly incomplete if we could explain only the bad guys, and leave the good guys as miraculously enlightened consciousnesses who just happen to drop down into history at the present moment.
19 But although neo-Durkheimian sociology gives an optimistic view, on the whole, of the structural trends of history with respect to cruelty, another side of sociology is the neo- Weberian view, which points to the creation of a distinctively modern form of cruelty. Ritualistically bounded enclaves characteristic of tribal and aristocratic societies have been dissolved, to a large extent, not only by the growth of complex differentiated networks, but by the state. From a Weberian point of view, pre-modern society was largely organized around patrimonial households (Weber, 1968 ]: 956-1110); enclaves of authority by property-owning elders, who rule their families, household servants, and economic dependents like independent fiefs. The growth of the modern state has been to penetrate society, inscribing individuals on the rolls of the state as military conscripts, as taxpayers, as subjects for education, health and welfare regulation, and for political mobilization as citizens and voters. Organizationally, all these activities were done by creating bureaucracies and expanding their reach; bureaucracies based on the impersonal interchangeability of their subjects, keeping records on all they come in contact with, acting according to written rules. State bureaucracies have broken through the walls of patrimonial households, restricting the power of elders and parents, freeing their individual members in some respects while tying them into bureaucratic regimentation in other respects.
20 On the whole, bureaucratic penetration of society has created more individualism, more cosmopolitanism, more concern for the universal and abstract than for the local and the particular; and in this respect bureaucratized modernity has reduced the conditions which produce ritualistic cruelty. Indeed bureaucracy reduces the level of ritualism of everything. But the Kafkaesque iron cage that Weber worried about before his death in 1920 has for the most part turned out to be less rigorous than he expected; instead of one big dominating bureaucracy there have been a multiplicity of overlapping bureaucracies. Persons working inside bureaucracies have gradually become more egalitarian and informal, at least in their personal dealings among themselves, even as we come to rely on a background of formal procedures which are built into organizational routine. Many bureaucracies have turned out to be surprisingly benign, although perhaps this is mainly true in rich societies during periods of economic growth.
21 The return of cruelty in its second form, bureaucratic cruelty, is most apparent in bureaucracies whose task is to administer coercive power. This happens when the state acts militarily or diplomatically against external states, and also in the exercise of police power internally. The chief feature of bureaucracy is long chains of command. Orders are given and procedures are formalized — sometimes by chief executives or military commanders, but just as often by civilians, by judges, by administrative review boards, by staff specialists whose task is to formulate rules and regulations and circulate them throughout the organization. Chains of responsibility are often complicated out of all recognition; the consequences of decisions made in one place, of rules implemented through myriad channels, are often invisible in the eyes of those made them. Bureaucracy operates under a formal myth of responsibility, but in fact
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much of what happens consists of what Robert Merton (1936) called “unanticipated consequences of purposive social action”. Since leaders and administrators are replaceable and indeed are often replaced, and those who carry out a policy locally are far from those who formulated it, the gap between what is officially intended and what actually happens is often large. Sometimes the discrepancy is trivial and the organization muddles along; sometimes it is comic, and bureaucrats themselves — ourselves — laugh about its irrationalities; sometimes however the means are coercive and the results are what I call bureaucratic callousness.
22 Take for example the diplomatic weapon of economic sanctions. This has been used in recent decades as a tactic of mildness, avoiding the cruelties of war. But international economic sanctions have rarely been effective in modifying the policies of so-called rogue regimes, much less in overthrowing a despotic government. To expect that increasing economic discontent among the people is a path to revolution is sociologically ignorant; historical comparisons by Skocpol (1979), Goldstone (1991), and others have shown that revolutions start at the top, with state crises and splits among elites, frequently through military defeats and expenses; the peaceful pathway to forcing regime change is in fact a mirage. Fifty years of US policy towards Cuba is an example of this failure; and we should expect little from sanctions against North Korea. Economic sanctions fall chiefly upon the poorest people, while privileged groups survive economic sanctions better than others, just as they survive most during disasters. Economic sanctions are often a hidden form of cruelty, hidden by its distant bureaucratic mechanism and seemingly impersonal mode of operation.
23 Warfare carried out by bureaucracy also produces much callous cruelty. Massive organizations, planning military operations from long distance, override individual details. Even if war is waged in the name of humanitarian ideals, and even if rules of engagement are spelled out to make fighting humane, the impersonal nature of bureaucratic structure generates its own cruelty. Large-scale armies aim to destroy not just the front line but the infrastructure of support; this means attacking not only logistics and military communications but economic targets. In the last 20 years, increased scientific precision in targeting attempts to reduce collateral damage to civilians in one way, but increases it in another. As long-distance weapons become more lethal, armies respond by dispersing and hiding (Biddle, 2004). This happens not only in guerrilla war, where soldiers hide among the people, but even in conventional warfare. Battlefields expand as armies avoid concentrating troops and military equipment where they can be easily hit by long distance enemy artillery, rockets or aerial bombing. Satellite communications and global computer networks allow rich armies to avoid some of their own casualties by fighting via remote control, such as with pilotless drones; but this is fighting in an ultra-bureaucratic mode, increasing the tendency to impersonality; precisely because pilots are so far away and rely of purely mechanical signals, drones like the US Predators flying deep inside Pakistan or Afghanistan frequently hit civilians as well as military.
24 Besides these cruelties of the ever-expanding battlefield, there is a more basic, inherent callousness of combat. Fighting takes precedence over anything else in that location; wherever the enemy is met becomes the battlefield. Civilians who happen to live there, even if they escape injury, have their homes wrecked or taken over, their livelihood destroyed. They are turned into refugees. Wide battle fronts, advances and retreats of armies, push refugees along with them, adding another callous cruelty. The first
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concern of the military is to supply necessities such as food and water to their own troops; refugees come a distant third, even after enemy prisoners. Battlefields create inadvertent disasters, as bad as hurricane, fire or earthquake, because they destroy the built environment which provides inhabitants with basic necessities of life. The problem was not so severe historically in earlier forms of war, where armies were smaller and battlefields could be encompassed by a few thousand meters; modern battlefields covering hundreds or thousands of kilometers impose callous damage on more noncombatants. The enormous population losses of the Eastern Front in World War II were largely of this sort; a recent example on a smaller scale is the damage to civilians in the successful war of the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) ending in 2009.
25 Bureaucratic callousness adds another dimension to the Nazi holocaust and similar episodes of genocide or population cleansing. Multiple causes of death were involved; I would argue that even if the perpetrators’ aim was not to murder the captured population, the effects of bureaucratic callousness in large-scale forced population movements were responsible for many deaths. Herding crowds of people into railroad cars for long journeys without food, water, heat or sanitation was bound to kill many; forced labor camps do not have to deliberately construct gas chambers if they keep the level of nutrition so low that people starve to death. The Armenian genocide carried out by the Turkish regime in 1915-16 did not necessarily depend upon official intent to exterminate the Armenians (Melson, 1992). Forcing them to march hundreds of kilometers from their homes, with inadequate supplies, into the Syrian desert was enough to kill many by sheer deprivation.
26 Let me add yet another mechanism to the complexities of cruelty. Bureaucratic callousness tends to create local conditions for the revival of ritualistic cruelty. People who are deprived of the basic means of subsistence become pathetic, diseased, dirty; robbed of the means of normal dignified self-presentation, it becomes easy for their captors to regard them as subhuman. Masses of deprived victims come to incite disgust rather than sympathy — in the same way that a dirty, ugly beggar on the street makes us shudder. Thus the growth of sadism among Nazi prison guards, and the Turkish populace along the route of the Armenian forced march found it easy — at the moment the spectacle appeared before their eyes — to despise and maltreat these forced refugees, adding many scenes of gratuitous ritual cruelty to a trajectory of suffering already formed on the macro level by bureaucratic callousness.
27 In conclusion, a few words about the revival of torture. Incidents like those perpetrated by American military guards in the Abu Ghraib prison developed in the context of a bureaucratic organization, processing large numbers of captives. Multiple causes contributed to the torture of prisoners. On one level, the official chain of command sent down orders to extract information. This is a regular feature of all combat organization, which tries to gather intelligence from prisoners about the enemy. This has gone on in all armies for hundreds of years; very little research exists on how it has been done and what level of coercion has been regarded as normal. In general, battlefield prisoners are interrogated rather quickly, which tends to rule out prolonged or elaborate torture. What happened at Abu Ghraib is better known, because it was documented by modern surveillance technology, the mobile phone cameras of the guards themselves. What we saw goes into another dimension, where torture becomes not instrumental but ritualistic, an end in itself. Clearly the guards were enjoying
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humiliating the prisoners. Routine security precautions such as blindfolds were escalated to a further level, so that helplessly blind, passive prisoners could be arranged in postures that were not only painful but degrading. For the guards, this became an atmosphere of fun, from their perspective, full of laughter and humor. It added a sexual element, not only because of forced nakedness but with a risqué quality from the presence of female soldiers in the gender-integrated US army. For the guards, this was the atmosphere of a fraternity party.
28 Now we have come full circle. Ritual cruelty flourishes in small, close-knit groups of local solidarity, when they have power over despised outsiders. Bureaucratic organizations, as sociological researchers found in the years after Max Weber, contain an informal structure within. When the bureaucracy is a total institution, encompassing its inhabitants’ entire lives (Goffman, 1961), these ritual boundaries become magnified. The bureaucratic military prison reconstructs within itself the conditions of medieval society — the all-powerful aristocracy ruling over a degraded caste of peasant-slaves. The combination of high Durkheimian density and ritualized vertical boundaries creates the conditions for ritual torture. As long as the prison structure dominates, this is downward cruelty. But it is not surprising that those who are humiliated respond, when they can, by ritual violence of rebellion from below. The ceremonial beheading of Western captives shown on al-Qaeda tapes are structurally like the Irish ritual mutilations of their token victims in the New York uprising of 1863.
29 What can be done? Ritual cruelty is not as widespread as it was historically because many structures have changed. But bureaucracy creates its own form of cruelty, and we need more explicit awareness in guarding against this. And modern conditions can create little enclaves, revivals of tribalism which generate the return of ritual cruelty. Here micro-sociology can help. Research by Stefan Klusemann (2009) using video tapes from the 1994 Srebrenica massacre, has shown there are micro-interactional turning points, when ritual violence is either unleashed or inhibited. Greater awareness of these micro-interactional processes — both in their emotional dynamics, and in the dangerous configurations of small group structures — can enable us to better train our own forces and avoid some of the conditions which produce ritualistic cruelty. The micro is small, and these are small steps. Nevertheless, the micro is something we can control, with sufficient awareness of how it operates. In the end, sociology gives some grounds for optimism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Asbury, Herbert (1928), The Gangs of New York, New York, Knopf.
Biddle, Stephen (2004), Military Power. Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Black, Donald (1998), The Social Structure of Right and Wrong, San Diego, Academic Press.
Collins, Randall (2004), Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
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Collins, Randall (2008), Violence. A Micro-Sociological Theory, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Durkheim, Emile (1964 ]), The Division of Labor in Society, New York, Free Press.
Goffman, Erving (1961), Asylums, New York, Doubleday.
Goldstone, Jack (1991), Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, Berkeley, University of California Press.
Helbling, Jürg (2006), Tribale Kriege. Konflikte in Gesellschaften ohne Zentralgewalt, Broschiert Campus Verlag.
Klusemann, Stefan (2009), “Micro-situational antecedents of violent atrocity”, Sociological Forum, 25, pp. 272-295.
Mackie, J. D. (1978), A History of Scotland, London, Penguin.
Mann, Michael (2005), The Dark Side of Democracy. Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Melson, Robert (1992), Revolution and Genocide. On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Merton, Robert K. (1936), “The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action”, American Sociological Review, 1, pp. 894-904.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1956 ]), The Genealogy of Morals, New York, Doubleday.
Parsons, Talcott (1964), “Evolutionary universals in society”, American Sociological Review, 29, pp. 339-357.
Rosaldo, Renato (1980), Ilongot Headhunting, Berkeley, University of California Press.
Skocpol, Theda (1979), States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Weber, Max (1968 ]), Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster Press.
ABSTRACTS
One form of cruelty arises from ritually bounded social groups, where altruistic morality does not extend beyond the boundaries of one’s own enclave, and deliberate public cruelty to enemies is a ritual of group solidarity. Ritualized public displays of cruelty upon helpless victims are most strongly institutionalized in societies which combine hierarchic stratification with strongly ritualized group membership. Cruelty returns in its second form, bureaucratic callousness, through the impersonal structure of modern warfare and the exercise of organizational power.
Uma forma de crueldade surge de grupos sociais unidos ritualmente, onde a moralidade altruísta não ultrapassa as fronteiras e limites de cada um, e a deliberada crueldade pública para com os inimigos é um ritual de solidariedade de grupo. Demonstrações públicas ritualizadas de crueldade sobre vítimas indefesas estão fortemente institucionalizadas em sociedades que combinam uma estratificação hierárquica com uma pertença de grupo fortemente ritualizada. A crueldade volta na sua segunda forma, a insensibilidade burocrática, através da estrutura impessoal da guerra moderna e do exercício do poder organizacional.
Une forme de cruauté vient de groupes sociaux unis par des rites, où la moralité altruiste ne va pas au-delà des frontières et des limites de chacun et où la cruauté publique délibérée envers les ennemis est un rituel de solidarité du groupe. Les démonstrations publiques ritualisées de
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cruauté envers des victimes sans défense sont fortement institutionnalisées dans les sociétés qui allient une stratification hiérarchique à une appartenance de groupe fortement ritualisée. La cruauté revient sous sa seconde forme, l’insensibilité bureaucratique, à travers la structure impersonnelle de la guerre moderne et de l’exercice du pouvoir organisationnel.
Una forma de crueldad surge de grupos sociales unidos ritualmente, donde la moralidad altruista no supera las fronteras y límites de cada uno, y la deliberada crueldad pública hacia los enemigos es un ritual de solidaridad de grupo. Demostraciones públicas ritualizadas de crueldad sobre víctimas indefensas están fuertemente institucionalizadas en sociedades que combinan una estratificación jerárquica con una pertenencia de grupo fuertemente ritualizada. La crueldad vuelve en su segunda forma, la insensibilidad burocrática, a través de la estructura impersonal de la guerra moderna y del ejercicio del poder organizacional.
INDEX
Mots-clés: violence rituelle, dynamique temporelle, cruauté bureaucratique Palavras-chave: violência ritual, dinâmica temporal, crueldade burocrática Palabras claves: violencia ritual, dinámica temporal, crueldad burocrática Keywords: ritual violence, time-dynamics, bureaucratic cruelty
AUTHOR
RANDALL COLLINS
Professor of Sociology, Sociology Department, University of Pennsylvania. E-mail: [email protected]
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Violência na escola, processos de socialização e formas de regulação Violence at school, socialisation processes and forms of regulation Violence à l’école, processus de socialisation et modes de régulation Violencia en la escuela, procesos de socialización y formas de regulación
João Sebastião
Introdução
1 Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar algumas das dimensões do debate social sobre a violência na escola, já que nele se cruzam um número significativo de conceções sociais sobre a infância, a escola e a evolução das sociedades de modernidade avançada, facto que o torna um objeto particularmente interessante do ponto de vista sociológico.
2 O processo de transformação do fenómeno violência na escola de um problema escolar em problema abordado pela comunidade científica produziu-se em Portugal a partir da década de 1990, com o progressivo desenvolvimento de pesquisas inspiradas no debate lançado por Dan Olweus (1978) em torno do conceito de bullying. Este crescimento coincidiu com o período em que internacionalmente a problemática se afirmou através do desenvolvimento de uma comunidade de especialistas (Brown e Munn, 2008), produzindo-se uma gradual integração neste debate por parte da comunidade científica portuguesa, através da elaboração de teses de mestrado e doutoramento, pesquisas de base nacional, assim como da participação em redes europeias. Em paralelo, com alguma coincidência no tempo, deu-se a implementação da primeira política pública específica para regular os comportamentos violentos na escola (Programa Escola Segura, criado em 1992). Apesar desta coincidência, o contacto entre estes dois processos foi bastante limitado, evoluindo as políticas nacionais de regulação da violência a partir da conceção de que esta constituía uma agressão à comunidade escolar proveniente do exterior, enquanto o debate científico se abria para perspetivas menos centradas na psicologia e passava a incluir outras abordagens e metodologias. Este (relativo) distanciamento entre o contributo da produção de conhecimento no
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campo científico e o processo de elaboração de políticas públicas manteve-se, com algumas exceções, no essencial até hoje, embora de facto se tenha produzido uma significativa transferência da linguagem científica para os discursos político, mediático e de senso comum, num processo particularmente poderoso de dupla hermenêutica (Giddens, 1989). Este processo foi expressivo durante a discussão pública em 2010 sobre o projeto de decreto-lei relativo à criminalização do bullying, em que a participação cruzada de políticos e cientistas produziu um momento particularmente intenso de confronto e mobilização pública do conhecimento científico. A influência do conhecimento científico sobre as formas de regulação dos comportamentos violentos na escola foi assim no essencial indireta, não resultando de uma prática sistemática de mobilização desse conhecimento pelo campo político, mas sendo maioritariamente realizada através da circulação social de noções nele inspiradas. Esta utilização baseada na difusão social de um conceito desligado da teoria que o suporta resultou num processo de naturalização do bullying, que emergiu como uma noção particularmente adaptada para confirmar as “evidências” que a realidade social se encarregava de fornecer quotidianamente. Reforçaram-se assim as visões que consideram que certos alunos são “naturalmente” violentos, que a violência desses alunos destrói a “essência” pacífica da escola, e que, em certos meios sociais e escolares, a violência é inevitável e incontrolável como resultado das suas características sociais e culturais. Abordar as questões da violência na escola implica assim, antes de mais, questionar as conceções de senso comum, já que constituem um significativo obstáculo à possibilidade de produção de conhecimento científico na área das ciências sociais e da sociologia em particular.
A necessidade de construir um objeto de estudo
3 Uma primeira conceção de senso comum diz respeito ao caráter “anómalo” e “anómico” da existência de atos violentos na escola. Constituindo a violência um elemento integrante e estruturante das sociedades desde a Antiguidade (Elias, 1989), a sua frequência e intensidade, contrariamente à perceção comum, tem vindo a diminuir quando olhada numa perspetiva de longo prazo (Collins, 2004; Bishop e Phillips, 2006; Mennell, 2006). Nesse processo de regulação e controlo da violência,1 a escola foi entendida na modernidade como um dos instrumentos fundamentais para “civilizar” os povos. Contudo, desde que se autonomizou e afirmou enquanto instituição os relatos sobre situações de violência no seu interior foram frequentes, não constituindo este tipo de situações algo de novo e sendo apenas facto recente a relevância social que lhe é atribuída (Sebastião, 2009).
4 Uma parte nuclear da argumentação sobre a violência na escola centra-se na ideia de que esta constituiria um bom exemplo do espírito dos tempos, marcado pelo desrespeito das novas gerações, pela ausência de disciplina e valores e pela incapacidade para ter sucesso na distribuição dos elementos culturais mais relevantes. Associada a estas conceções surge normalmente a defesa da reposição da “autoridade” do professor e a responsabilização das famílias pelos comportamentos de crianças e jovens em contexto escolar, como se as escolas se encontrassem indefesas e incapazes de reagir face à violência. Não se trata de uma conceção recente mas apenas do ressurgir de visões que olham a modernidade com desconfiança, vista principalmente
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como a difusão de quadros culturais utilitaristas produtores de degradação civilizacional.
5 Outras posições tomam como origem dos problemas de violência o processo de massificação escolar e a crescente diversidade de quadros culturais e de valores, resultado da presença de alunos oriundos de grupos sociais e étnicos considerados como incivilizados ou incapazes de adotar os comportamentos da maioria cultural. Trata-se de discursos claramente xenófobos ou mesmo racistas, que ignoram, ou desvalorizam ostensivamente, os processos de discriminação no acesso à educação e a acumulação de fatores de desvantagem e agressividade em algumas escolas ou turmas, como resultado de mecanismos escolares informais de diferenciação seletiva.
6 Uma terceira ordem de argumentos encontra-se associada ao sentido que é socialmente atribuído à violência entre crianças e aos riscos percebidos pelas famílias como daí resultantes. A ideia de que a infância constitui um grupo social em risco tem vindo a ser complementada pela perceção de que ela é igualmente geradora de risco (Korbin, 2003), facto que tornaria as escolas e outros espaços predominantemente infantis como locais potencialmente perigosos. Acontecimentos como os massacres em escolas americanas e alemãs, o caso Jamie Bulger em Inglaterra, o caso de pedofilia da Casa Pia ou o caso Maddie em Portugal reforçaram de forma significativa a perceção dos riscos potenciais a que as crianças poderão estar sujeitas. A reclassificação das escolas como locais de risco (real ou potencial) leva a que as famílias tenham vindo a alterar os seus comportamentos, reduzindo as margens de autonomia das crianças, restringindo de forma significativa as experiências a que estas têm acesso. Fala-se mesmo da destruição da infância (ou da sua reconfiguração enquanto experiências típicas de um período de vida) como resultado da crescente aversão ao risco por parte de famílias, instituições e legisladores (Gill, 2007).
O problema da disciplinação da infância
7 As conceções modernas de infância estruturaram-se ao longo de mais de dois séculos em torno do desenvolvimento da infância enquanto categoria social autónoma, processo esse simultâneo com as transformações na estrutura e funções da família. O entendimento pré-moderno dos processos de socialização infantil, marcado por quadros de valores religiosos, colocava particular ênfase na obediência, em quadros familiares caracterizados pela fraca possibilidade de autonomia infantil; por contraposição ao entendimento moderno que valoriza a individualidade da criança, como paradigmaticamente o defendeu Rousseau em Emílio. Da Educação. A criança passa a ser definida como naturalmente inocente, por contraposição à ideia cristã de inocência adquirida, resultado da purificação através do ritual do batismo (Smith, 2012: 27). A dicotomia entre o discurso religioso do mal e o discurso modernista da inocência marcou as visões sobre a infância (Vanderbroeck e Bouverne-De Bie, 2006; Meyer, 2007; Smith, 2012), oscilando entre versões centradas na intervenção sobre o universo familiar ou sobre a responsabilização e autonomização das crianças.
8 A predominância da conceptualização moderna da criança como um ser frágil, marcado pela necessidade de proteção, traduziu-se pela intervenção sobre as famílias, com a redução da sua autonomia para as educar, assim como sobre os seus quadros de vida mais amplos (regulação do trabalho infantil, mortalidade, pobreza, vadiagem, etc.). A individualização da criança foi ainda acompanhada a partir do século XIX pelo
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desenvolvimento de um conjunto de formas de cuidar das crianças progressivamente inspiradas no saber científico, e pelo desenvolvimento de profissões associadas à educação e regulação dos comportamentos infantis. A extensão da infância a todas as camadas sociais, nomeadamente às camadas populares consideradas como incapazes de educar os filhos nestes valores, traduziu-se por um duplo processo tutelado de disciplinação do corpo e da mente, com o objetivo de desenvolver o caráter e a personalidade, elementos centrais de uma autonomização pautada pelo autocontrolo (White e Hunt, 2000: 104-105). A escola constituiu um instrumento central nesse processo de reconfiguração da infância, cujo objetivo era produzir crianças dotadas de competências adaptadas às sociedades modernas.
9 A predominância destas conceções necessita ser tomada em conta, já que para abordar a problemática da violência na escola é necessário colocar a questão de saber como a relacionar com o estatuto social particular de crianças e jovens nas sociedades contemporâneas. As abordagens centradas na vitimação tendem a olhar de forma ambivalente para crianças e jovens, sejam estes como seres desprotegidos e imaturos, alvo de agressores caracterizados por uma racionalidade perversa (eles próprios crianças), não tomando em consideração que o processo de socialização se encontra sujeito nestas idades a “dessocializações e ressocializações sucessivas” (Mollo-Bouvier, 2005: 393), resultado dos vários contextos institucionais e relacionais pelos quais as crianças e jovens circulam. Trata-se de atores sociais cujas autonomia, maturidade biológica e emocional não se encontram claramente estruturadas, dando origem a incoerências entre os atributos de um estatuto social marcado por um entendimento de irresponsabilidade (não trabalha, não vota, não constitui família, etc.) e as exigências sociais que lhes são colocadas, que frequentemente pressupõem exatamente o contrário, ou seja, um ator racional, responsável e autónomo.
10 A questão da disciplinação das crianças coloca-se num quadro complexo em que se cruzam a necessidade de socializar as crianças de forma a garantir a sua adesão aos quadros de valores e sistemas de regras sociais, a crescente importância de quadros de valores ativos de tipo universalista e a forma como interferem com os processos de socialização e as formas de regulação dos comportamentos infantis (os direitos da criança, por exemplo); e, ainda, o impacto das transformações resultantes da globalização nos enquadramentos institucionais e quadros de vida familiar nas sociedades europeias.
11 O problema da disciplinação das crianças em contexto escolar deu-se em Portugal desde cedo, como mostra a análise dos discursos normativos e práticas disciplinares nos liceus oitocentistas realizada por Áurea Adão (2005). A construção dos primeiros quadros normativos escolares relativos à disciplina dos alunos deu-se em meados do século XIX e resultou, no essencial, da necessidade de resposta ao desenvolvimento progressivo de um conjunto de comportamentos entendidos como desajustados e indignos de alunos do liceu, fossem eles relacionados com a destruição de bens escolares, indisciplina durante as aulas ou noutros espaços escolares, pouca aplicação nos estudos ou faltas às aulas (Adão, 2005: 217). O desenvolvimento, mesmo que incipiente, da rede de liceus colocou rapidamente o problema da disciplina, levando à necessidade de garantir a padronização dos comportamentos individuais enquanto forma de reduzir a sua imprevisibilidade (Pires, 2012), cada vez mais entendida como impeditiva do sucesso do processo de transmissão de valores pela escola. Para isso foram elaborados quadros normativos marcados por um entendimento estrito da disciplina, sustentada num
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sistema de relações escolares fortemente hierarquizado, em que os alunos deveriam comportar-se de acordo com um conjunto de regras predefinidas. É importante tomar em conta que nos liceus oitocentistas, frequentados por um número reduzido de jovens, a questão da disciplina colocava-se não tanto pela diversidade dos seus alunos, mas principalmente pela novidade da implementação de processo educativos formais baseados na aprendizagem de saberes científicos num contexto institucional novo. Tal problema ressurgirá de forma acrescida com a primeira grande explosão escolar após a II Guerra Mundial, sendo crescentes o relatos das dificuldades dos professores sobre como entender e intervir sobre os comportamentos dos alunos (Testanière, 1967).
12 O problema da disciplina coloca-se igualmente na escola contemporânea, embora de forma diferente, já que com o progressivo alargamento da escolaridade obrigatória a gestão dos comportamentos de grandes grupos de alunos passa a ser encarada como um problema permanente e sistémico, resultante tanto do número como da crescente diversidade social e cultural dos seus públicos, diversidade essa indutora, mesmo que parcialmente, de respostas comportamentais variadas por parte dos alunos. A necessidade de, no mesmo espaço relacional, obter uma relativa coerência comportamental com atores caracterizados por serem portadores de sistemas de valores e quadros culturais múltiplos, a par com a crescente mobilidade que leva significativos grupos de alunos a sair e entrar do sistema em momentos não predefinidos, como resultado de movimentos migratórios, transforma o problema da disciplinação num debate permanente e num desafio à escola contemporânea de massas. Os impactos da globalização nas sociedades europeias (incluindo neles os desenvolvimentos institucionais e políticos da União Europeia), as reconfigurações das desigualdades sociais (Costa, 2012) e as transformações estruturais por que estão a passar os sistemas educativos colocam novos problemas relativos à socialização das crianças e jovens, já que dificultam a construção de quadros relacionais padronizados relativamente previsíveis (Pires, 2012).
A violência enquanto forma de ação contingente
13 Analisar sociologicamente a violência na escola implica, assim, construir uma problemática capaz de dar conta da multidimensionalidade do fenómeno, questionando as conceções que a veem como o resultado simples de crianças mal socializadas ou portadoras de distúrbios comportamentais. Esse percurso implica a adoção de uma definição de violência capaz de considerar não apenas o ato em si, mas igualmente o quadro relacional em que este se produz. Entendemos aqui por violência os atos caracterizados pela agressão intencional, seja esta física ou psicossocial, podendo assumir formas reativas/afetivas ou proativas/instrumentais. No primeiro caso encontram-se as situações em que a agressão constitui uma reação emocional a um impulso e tem como objetivo central magoar o outro, como resultado de uma atitude hostil ou provocação, constituindo a agressão um fim em si; já no segundo caso constitui um meio para atingir um fim, que, sendo atingido, esgota a ameaça de violência (Sebastião, 2009: 40-41). Trata-se da ação de alguém sobre outro(s), configuração relacional particular marcada pela tensão confrontacional (Collins, 2008: 20), em que as relações de poder entre intervenientes são normalmente assimétricas em desfavor da vítima. Mas importa considerar que “os atos individuais ocorrem, sempre, num quadro relacional” (Pires, 2012: 33), sendo necessário abordar as situações
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de violência em contexto, já que muitas das análises não tomam em conta as “mediações políticas e sociais, mas também a espessura histórica, ao que possa separar o momento em que se forja uma personalidade do momento da passagem ao ato” (Wieviorka, 2008: 197). Este cruzamento constitui um pressuposto analítico fundamental, pois apenas assim se poderá compreender a variabilidade de situações e comportamentos violentos, nomeadamente o reduzido número de crianças e jovens que podemos classificar estritamente como vítimas ou agressores. As significativas flutuações constatadas por variadas pesquisas, com um número significativo de casos em que a maioria das crianças envolvidas em situações de violência alternam nos papéis de agressores, vítimas ou espectadores ao longo do percurso ou mesmo do ano escolar, mostram que é necessário considerar os arranjos relacionais em que estes comportamentos se produziram.
14 Para compreendermos as dinâmicas associadas às situações de violência precisamos de considerar, por um lado, um eixo de análise que dê conta da intervenção das instituições formais, seja nos processos longos de socialização formal (a aprendizagem dos sistemas de regras formais e quadros de valores societais), seja nos seus modelos e práticas de regulação da violência (programas formais de intervenção ou educação para a cidadania); e, por outro, considerar um segundo eixo de análise em que sejam considerados os processos longos de socialização comunitária (relacionados com a aprendizagem de quadros e modelos sociais e culturais grupais) e as práticas informais de regulação da violência, resultantes dos processos de interação entre pessoas e grupos (como a família ou os grupos de pares). Se considerarmos a forma como estes processos interagem em cada momento particular, podemos olhar para a violência na escola como uma forma de ação contingente, resultante do entrecruzar dos processos de estruturação das conceções e atitudes violentas no quadro dos processos de socialização múltiplos a que as crianças estão hoje sujeitas, com os processos de regulação social da violência. Neste quadro os atores sociais (crianças e jovens, com os recursos reflexivos de crianças e jovens) possuem mais ou menos capacidade para agir conforme o quadro relacional em que se integram, sendo necessário:
15 - analisar os processos de interação (entre crianças, entre crianças e diversos tipos de adultos, entre adultos);
16 - considerar as especificidades dos diversos tipos de grupos existentes dentro do quadro relacional que é a escola, sabendo-se que esta questão se coloca em diversos níveis, nomeadamente organizacional (os grupos turma / os anos de escolaridade) e informal (os grupos de pares);
17 - discutir a forma como são construídos e levados à prática os sistemas de regras nas escolas, sejam eles produzidos localmente ou resultantes de quadros mais amplos (nomeadamente os produzidos centralmente no sistema educativo). Figura 1 A violência enquanto forma de ação contingente
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18 A análise das situações de violência na escola coloca assim a necessidade de compreender de que forma a reconfiguração dos quadros de socialização das crianças e jovens influencia e regula o desenvolvimento de atitudes e comportamentos violentos. É contudo necessário rejeitar as conceções que colocam a explicação dos atos violentos entre o resultado mecânico da atuação dos processos de socialização e a expressão de um qualquer traço patológico. Não se trata de ignorar os condicionamentos estruturais da ação individual nem a influência das características individuais, mas de evidenciar como cada situação de violência traduz uma configuração relacional particular com quadros de possibilidades diversos, em que diferentes tipos e graus de tensão confrontacional podem levar (ou não) a situações de confronto. Um exemplo significativo das consequências incertas de uma situação de conflito tem sido desvendado pelas pesquisas em torno da atuação daqueles que as testemunham, sem serem os seus intervenientes centrais. Tanto a possibilidade de um confronto terminar em violência, como a sua intensidade e a gravidade das suas consequências dependem muitas vezes da atuação dos espectadores, seja esta pacificadora, neutra ou incentivadora da agressão (Gini e outros, 2008).
19 As conceções deterministas obscurecem ainda o facto de estas situações se produzirem em contextos institucionais e organizacionais particulares, em que o sistema de regras é apropriado de forma diferenciada por cada tipo de ator, como resultado da sua posição nas hierarquias internas da escola e das características particulares destas (políticas, administrativas, pedagógicas, entre outras). A violência expressa, neste sentido, uma possibilidade de ação com características próprias, resultantes dos constrangimentos a que cada agente se encontra sujeito num espaço-tempo determinado.
20 São ainda de rejeitar algumas abordagens que olham para toda a atividade da escola como uma forma de violência simbólica. Nesse quadro os comportamentos violentos dos alunos constituiriam uma resposta legítima, mesmo que muitas vezes fora de contexto, enquanto atos de resistência face ao veredito escolar e aos processos de dominação. Em sentido lato estas conceções aplicam à escola atual parte dos quadros teóricos produzidos nos anos 1960-70, sem tomarem em consideração as transformações societais e educativas, e os desenvolvimentos teóricos entretanto produzidos.
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Realidades contraditórias
21 A definição de políticas de combate à violência na escola tem-se colocado em Portugal nas últimas décadas de forma sinuosa, sendo marcada por um pilar de continuidade (o Programa Escola Segura, cuja dimensão policial sempre se sobrepôs à sua dimensão cívica e educativa), pela instabilidade das políticas relativas à regulação dos comportamentos (o Estatuto do Aluno, de caráter nacional, foi revisto entre 2002 e 2012 por quatro vezes) e pela relativa “autonomia” das escolas que, apesar de obrigadas a enquadrar a sua atividade com a legislação nacional, sempre se caracterizaram por uma ampla gama de formas de controlo comportamental.
22 Como resultado da nossa atividade no desenvolvimento do Observatório de Segurança Escolar confrontámo-nos regularmente com situações que colocavam em questão não apenas as conceções de senso comum, como por vezes alguma da teoria disponível. A disponibilidade, em vários anos seguidos, de informação extensiva sobre a realidade nacional permitiu retirar algumas conclusões interessantes. Foi possível compreender que:
23 - em média cerca de 90% das escolas não relatava qualquer incidente de violência;
24 - apenas 0,2% das escolas tinham mais de 50 ocorrências anuais;
25 - cerca de 50% das ocorrências reportadas se situavam na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa;
26 - o número mais significativo de situações se produzia no primeiro período escolar entre setembro e novembro (Sebastião, Alves e Campos, 2010).
27 Estas regularidades mostravam que não poderíamos falar de violência na escola como se esta constituísse um fenómeno difundido uniformemente por todo o sistema educativo, já que a probabilidade de contactar com situações de violência era muito desigual, pois variava significativamente com a região, a escola frequentada e a época do ano. As variações no espaço e no tempo invalidam as teses de que a exposição ao risco de violência é igual em qualquer ponto do sistema educativo, colocando a necessidade de abordar os fenómenos sociais em contexto e considerar as relações de causalidade múltiplas que contribuem para os configurar.
28 Um segundo tipo de questões, na sequência das anteriores, resultou da identificação de um conjunto de situações “anómalas”. Uma primeira interrogação colocou-se a partir de duas escolas da periferia de Lisboa em que a frequência de ocorrências de violência por estas reportadas questionava as conceções socialmente predominantes sobre a radicação e sobrerrepresentação da violência escolar em contextos socialmente desfavorecidos. A primeira destas escolas, frequentada predominantemente por crianças de classe média, era aquela que, no final do segundo período escolar, relatara maior número de ocorrências no país, enquanto a segunda, inserida num contexto urbano fortemente degradado e com níveis elevados de pobreza e conflitualidade, relatara um número muito reduzido de ocorrências. A investigação realizada nessas escolas evidenciou a forma como as duas se posicionavam de modo muito diferente face ao problema, nomeadamente no tipo dispositivos organizacionais, gestão dos recursos e entendimento acerca do papel da escola. Se na primeira as situações de violência eram entendidas predominantemente como um problema a resolver pela direção da escola, que centralizava todo o processo, utilizando para isso uma abordagem eminentemente
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repressiva, já na segunda escola a direção procurava que a resolução dos problemas de violência constituísse uma preocupação coletiva de todos os adultos, enquadrando a atividade disciplinar como mais um elemento para promover a adesão de alunos e comunidade aos valores do sistema educativo (ou à visão que deles tinha a direção da escola). Ficou claro que a forma como as escolas reagiam às situações de violência dependia de um conjunto alargado de fatores, dos quais importa realçar a democraticidade interna do processo de construção do projeto educativo e do regulamento interno e os modelos e práticas organizacionais que lhes estão associadas. A existência de situações de violência encontrava-se fortemente associada, no primeiro caso, ao posicionamento da direção e ao tipo de processos de regulação que implementava, fundado num entendimento das situações de violência como provenientes do exterior ou como sendo típicas da adolescência. A dinâmica de intervenção da segunda escola evidenciou que esta, apesar dos fatores contextuais fortemente desfavoráveis, não deixava por isso de poder implementar estratégias próprias de regulação dos comportamentos capazes de pacificar a escola.
29 Uma segunda interrogação resultou da identificação em diversos grupos de escolas de situações de grande assimetria no número de situações de violência ocorridas em escolas situadas geograficamente muito próximas e inseridas em contextos sociais semelhantes. Estas disparidades eram particularmente interessantes do ponto de vista da investigação que levávamos a cabo, tendo-nos conduzido a desenvolver pesquisas de caráter comparativo e intensivo, nas quais nos centrámos não apenas em estabelecimentos escolares isolados e nos fatores que em cada um deles contribuiriam para aqueles resultados, para passarmos também a considerar a relação que estes estabeleciam entre si nos territórios educativos em que se situavam. Tomámos assim em consideração diferentes tipos de intervenientes e níveis de análise, processo que permitiu identificar um conjunto de continuidades e ruturas nas práticas destas escolas relativamente ao controlo dos comportamentos dos alunos.
30 Uma primeira conclusão diz respeito à relevância atribuída pelas escolas aos problemas da ordem, frequentemente priorizada face aos problemas da aprendizagem, encontrando-se implícito nesta opção que “corrigir” os comportamentos automaticamente melhoraria as aprendizagens. Esta visão pode ser encontrada no conjunto de princípios e estratégias organizacionais implementadas em todas as escolas, através de gabinetes de apoio ao aluno ou explicitamente através da criação de gabinetes estritamente disciplinares, tendo sido mesmo possível encontrar numa delas em permanência a afetação rotativa de um professor para o enquadramento dos alunos que criavam problemas disciplinares durante as aulas. A este propósito Anne Barrère refere que “para os professores a ordem na escola é hoje um indicador mínimo e global de sucesso, condição necessária e, por vezes, suficiente da autoestima e da reputação profissional” (Barrère, 2002: 3), o que explicará parcialmente alguma da relevância atribuída por estas escolas aos mecanismos de disciplinação. Os mecanismos pedagógicos e de apoio às aprendizagens eram, proporcionalmente, mais incipientes e instáveis nos recursos e determinação das escolas, tendo os apoios educativos e as aulas de substituição permanecido apenas de acordo com a obrigatoriedade imposta na sua concretização pelas políticas educativas nacionais, sem a existência de grandes esforços adicionais para os tentar manter. A relação entre violência e insucesso escolar estabelece-se de forma mais ou menos pacífica nestas escolas, convivendo em várias delas níveis elevados de insucesso (e representações desvalorizadas dos alunos com insucesso) com estratégias relativamente eficazes de controlo dos comportamentos
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violentos, sem que tal se traduza num questionamento por parte das direções ou outros agentes educativos.
31 Foi igualmente possível identificar uma significativa coincidência entre entendimentos sobre a disciplina e violência e a implementação de práticas educativas e organizacionais seletivas. As escolas em que os processos de regulação da violência e indisciplina eram mais centralizados, normalmente na direção, tendencialmente implementavam estratégias mais repressivas e marcadas pela prática da expulsão sistemática da sala de aula ou da suspensão dos alunos indisciplinados ou violentos por períodos relativamente longos; situação complementada pela orientação informal, através da sugestão de cursos profissionais disponíveis noutras escolas, ou da expulsão dos alunos com problemas de aprendizagem ou comportamentais para outras escolas.
32 A oferta educativa destas escolas restringia-se normalmente ao ensino regular, resistindo às sugestões de diferenciação da oferta educativa ou pedagógica. Um exemplo desta situação foi a recusa por um longo período da escola com mais ocorrências de violência, e níveis significativos de insucesso escolar, à proposta dos serviços centrais do Ministério da Educação para aderir ao programa Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária. Para a direção desta escola a razão dessa opção residia na “certeza” de que essa adesão produziria uma situação de estigmatização da escola e fuga ainda mais forte dos alunos de classe média para a escola pública mais próxima, conhecida pela eficácia dos seus mecanismos de seletividade sobre a composição social e níveis de sucesso escolar do grupo discente.
33 Nas escolas em que os processos de resolução de conflitos e de implementação da disciplina eram mais partilhados pelos seus diversos níveis organizacionais (nomeadamente os intermédios), tendencialmente procurava-se implementar estratégias menos repressivas, mais centradas na mudança dos comportamentos através de sanções com caráter mais educativo. Estas escolas caracterizavam-se normalmente por possuírem uma oferta educativa mais alargada e dirigida aos alunos com percursos de insucesso, embora o cruzamento entre ambas as dimensões nem sempre fosse claro, já que por vezes estas ofertas acabavam por representar mais uma opção ocupacional que formativa.
34 Uma outra dimensão de análise respeita à forma como se realizava a articulação entre as políticas definidas centralmente e as formas de implementação local. Esta divergência já tinha sido assinalada há muito tempo por Lipsky (1971), ao referir como os profissionais públicos encarregues de concretizar as políticas acabam por produzir leituras e práticas que incorporam os constrangimentos resultantes da posição que ocupam na definição das mesmas e nos recursos disponíveis para o fazerem. Nos processos concretos destas escolas e territórios identificámos um duplo constrangimento no que respeitava à forma como era enfrentado o problema da violência escolar, devido ao facto de as escolas (e todos os que nelas trabalham) serem simultaneamente objeto e instrumento da aplicação das políticas, o que cria situações ambíguas pois, como afirmam Maguire, Ball e Braun (2010: 156), “das escolas e professores espera-se que estejam familiarizados com as múltiplas (e por vezes contraditórias) políticas planeadas por outros, sendo eles os responsáveis por essas tarefas”.
35 Por um lado a instabilidade normativa já atrás referida traduziu-se pelo desenvolvimento de entendimentos regulatórios muito diferenciados, já que os agentes políticos genericamente desviaram a sua atenção dos processos de implementação dos
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mesmos para uma prolongada batalha ideológica em torno do Estatuto do Aluno. Os agentes locais encarregues de concretizar as políticas públicas através da adaptação dos normativos nacionais às especificidades locais fizeram-no assim num quadro de indecisão, o que aumentou a possibilidade de deliberações contraditórias, vazios de regulação e expressão nos regulamentos e práticas das opções e interesses particulares dos grupos dirigentes das escolas (nomeadamente a utilização dos regulamentos disciplinares como forma de controlar a relação com o contexto social em que se integram).
36 Por outro lado, o facto de se cruzarem no espaço das escolas e respetivos territórios educativos diversas políticas cujo objeto é a regulação dos comportamentos infantis traduz-se muitas vezes pela neutralização, pelo menos parcial, da eficácia de cada uma delas. A expressão desta situação foi evidente durante a realização de um focus group destinado a discutir as possibilidades de articulação local no combate à violência escolar, tornando-se a reunião num momento intenso de debate político. Mais do que afirmar uma posição pessoal, os responsáveis das diversas instituições com responsabilidade local na área da infância argumentaram com veemência em defesa da prioridade e autonomia da política que representavam no terreno, mesmo se era claro que estas perseguiam objetivos genericamente similares. A presença no terreno durante cerca de dois anos nesses territórios permitiu compreender que as situações de colaboração entre estas instituições eram essencialmente utilitárias e procuradas para suprir necessidades internas de quem as solicitava, não existindo metas ou objetivos definidos coletivamente a atingir, mesmo no quadro da Rede Social Local.
Notas conclusivas
37 A massificação dos sistemas educativos trouxe consigo novos desafios resultantes da sua crescente dimensão e diversidade, gerando controvérsias acerca da sua capacidade para conseguir uma adesão significativa a quadros comportamentais compatíveis com o funcionamento de modelos de formação de massas. A expansão dos problemas comportamentais acompanhou o rápido processo de massificação das escolaridades após a II Guerra Mundial, processo simultâneo com a descoberta do insucesso escolar enquanto problema, embora o estabelecimento de uma relação de causalidade entre ambas não encontre grande sustentação histórica. As situações de violência na escola expressam características particulares resultantes da transformação progressiva dos processos de socialização infantil nas sociedades contemporâneas, e das tentativas de redefinição da missão e métodos de organização do trabalho na escola, agora num contexto de globalização. A violência constitui um problema efetivo do sistema educativo e a sua análise contextualizada, que relativiza visões individualistas e patológicas, permite compreender as dinâmicas específicas de cada situação de violência como um arranjo relacional, entendido como o cruzamento num espaço- tempo particular dos processos transversais às sociedades com as decisões tomadas em situações de interação face a face marcadas pela tensão confrontacional. A adoção desta perspetiva permite-nos olhar para os incidentes de violência no quadro mais amplo do processo de escolarização, procurando estabelecer as continuidades entre as diversas dimensões analíticas que podemos mobilizar para estudar os sistemas e processos educativos. As situações de violência constituem neste contexto acontecimentos críticos que nos permitem analisar o ethos próprio de cada escola, evidenciando a forma
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como esta se representa e procura construir enquanto coletivo no processo de aplicação das políticas de educação. Decorre daqui um certo privilegiar das análises centradas na escola, contudo trata-se de uma decisão meramente analítica e pragmática relativa ao atual desenvolvimento da investigação sobre a violência na escola. Abrem-se hoje diversos caminhos à investigação, seja sobre os processos de aprovação de políticas de regulação dos comportamentos das crianças e das suas ligações aos processos políticos mais amplos da intervenção do estado na sociedade, seja sobre as micropolíticas produzidas a nível local e as estratégias organizacionais que as suportam; ou, ainda, sobre o nível de interação face a face na sala de aula, recreios ou corredores em que as situações de tensão confrontacional constituem momentos de grande complexidade analítica e sobre os quais raras foram as investigações produzidas. 1 Parte essencial do que Norbert Elias (1989) em outro contexto analítico designou processo civilizacional.
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NOTAS
1. 1.
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RESUMOS
Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar algumas das dimensões do debate social sobre a violência na escola, já que nele se cruzam conceções sociais sobre a infância, as políticas educativas e a evolução das sociedades de modernidade avançada. Procura-se assim contribuir para um melhor conhecimento sobre a eficácia das políticas de socialização infantil e a forma diversa e contraditória como estas são concretizadas localmente.
This article’s goal is to analyse some of the dimensions of the social debate on school violence, in that the issues in play bring together social conceptions about childhood, education policies, and the way societies that can be said to represent advanced modernity are evolving. The author seeks to help improve our knowledge about the efficacy of child socialisation policies and the diverse and contradictory way in which they are put into practice locally.
Cet article analyse certaines dimensions du débat social autour de la violence à l’école, en abordant les conceptions sociales sur l’enfance, les politiques éducatives et l’évolution des sociétés les plus modernes. Il s’agit de contribuer à une meilleure connaissance de l’efficacité des politiques de socialisation des enfants et des manières différentes et contradictoires dont elles sont mises en œuvre au plan local.
Este artículo tiene como objetivo analizar algunas de las dimensiones del debate social sobre la violencia en la escuela, ya que en él, se entrecruzan concepciones sociales sobre la infancia, las políticas educativas y la evolución de las sociedades de modernidad avanzada. De esta forma, se procura contribuir para un mejor conocimiento sobre la eficacia de las políticas de socialización infantil y la forma diversa y contradictoria como son concretizadas localmente.
ÍNDICE
Palabras claves: violencia en la escuela, políticas educativas, socialización infantil Mots-clés: violence à l’école, politiques éducatives, socialisation des enfants Palavras-chave: violência na escola, políticas educativas, socialização infantil Keywords: violence at school, education policies, child socialisation
AUTOR
JOÃO SEBASTIÃO
Docente no Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) e investigador no CIES-IUL. E-mail: [email protected]
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Violências nas escolas: decifrai-me ou vos devoro Violence at school: work me out or I will devour you Violence dans les écoles: déchiffrez-mois ou je vous dévore Violencias en las escuelas: decifradme o os devoro
Cândido Alberto Gomes, Adriana Lira, Delcimara Batista Caldas, Diogo Acioli Lima e Rosilene Beatriz Lopes
1 Esta aproximação de uma das esfinges mais desafiadoras dos nossos tempos se faz a partir de pesquisas brasileiras, efetuadas ao longo de mais de uma década por dois projetos em cooperação com a UNESCO, a Cátedra de Juventude, Educação e Sociedade e o Observatório de Violências nas Escolas / Brasil, ambos da Universidade Católica de Brasília. Nesse sentido, o primeiro desafio da esfinge é reconhecer a pluralidade do substantivo violência, ou seja, o tripé da violência da escola, na escola e contra a escola (cf. Correia e Matos, 2003). Cabe ainda esclarecer que este tripé não é novo, embora possa ter ganhado novas manifestações, selecionadas e veiculadas pela média. A história da educação está embebida de violências físicas e simbólicas da escola e de rebeliões de alunos (p. ex.: Metz, 1979; Thiercé, 2001). A literatura com frequência retrata a escola como instituição opressiva, onde alunos oprimidos podem tornar-se opressores dos seus colegas. Foi assim que Pompeia (2012 1888), em obra autobiográfica, situou uma escola de elite, em suas múltiplas dimensões de hipocrisia, como microcosmo da sociedade imperial brasileira. Na hierarquia social construída pelos alunos, colegas mais velhos acossavam os mais novos para trocar “proteção” por favores sexuais, denúncia extraordinária para o cinismo da época.
2 O Brasil, país também com face de esfinge, no último censo contou mais de 190 milhões de habitantes, dos quais 91,2% residentes em áreas urbanas (IBGE, 2011). Apesar de contar com o sétimo PIB do mundo, o coeficiente de Gini (quanto mais próximo de 1 maior a concentração de renda) baixou apenas de 0,636 em 1989 para não mais que 0, 543 em 2009. Como reflexo, os múltiplos Brasis, recortados por disparidades setoriais, regionais e sociais entrecruzadas, têm um dos sistemas educacionais mais violentos do mundo, considerando a alta incidência de fracasso escolar, excludente dos
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“deserdados” (Bourdieu e Passeron, 1964). Embora tenham se reduzido expressivamente nos últimos tempos, à custa, inclusive, de medidas simplesmente cartoriais, as taxas de reprovação e abandono do ensino fundamental (6-14 anos, quando ajustados anos e idade) chegavam em 2010 a 13,4% e, na educação média (15-17 anos), a 22,8% (ME/Inep, 2011). Em outros termos, a violência institucional se reduziu, mas parece não ser tocada em suas raízes.
Responsabilidade e “performatividade”
3 Lyotard (2000), entre outros autores, analisou os caminhos que levam às universidades “performáticas” na pós-modernidade. Entretanto, as torrentes não se abatem com poder absoluto. A possibilidade de agarrar-se às margens do rio constitui uma probabilidade de divergência. Sem ingenuidade, sabemos das íntimas relações desta “performatividade” com as avaliações externas e internas, que, na busca de suposta objetividade (positivista?), cria escalas numéricas. Assim, por exemplo, pesquisas sem financiamento externo podem “valer” zero; com financiamento público 1; com financiamento privado 2; com financiamento internacional 3, e assim por diante. A isso se aplica a curva normal para incensar as deusas da competitividade e da produtividade, ambas filhas das leis do mercado, que hoje tomaram o cume do monte Olimpo, aliás, por ironia, em particular nos tempos atuais, localizado na Grécia. Também temos amplo conhecimento das contradições entre valores proclamados e vividos por acadêmicos-avaliadores. Na possível caminhada para uma era “pós- política”, estabelece-se o reino das nuanças, onde as unanimidades brotam por geração espontânea. Assim, esquerda e direita se notam mais como tons cinzentos, não raro invertidos, do que posições políticas diversas ou opostas.
4 Antes de retornarmos à esfinge, sentimo-nos no dever de explicar ao leitor, numa sorte de prestação pública de contas, como nos desafiamos e nos respondemos no caminho da pesquisa e da extensão, entendidas como serviços à sociedade, isto é, para servir e não para sermos servidos. A UNESCO já manifestara suas preocupações com as contradições entre valores proclamados e vividos e patrocinara um estudo sobre a aplicação dos seus princípios aos projetos escolares e às políticas educacionais (Gomes, 2001a; 2001b). Em parte como consequência, a UNESCO estabeleceu com o Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Católica de Brasília, em 2002, um programa de pesquisas sobre o pináculo de um iceberg, as violências nas escolas. Em 2007, seguindo recomendação da própria UNESCO, abriu-se o leque temático, por meio da Cátedra de Juventude, Educação e Sociedade. Sem qualquer ufanismo, cumpre-nos esclarecer que esta década e pouco de pesquisa e extensão explorou as próprias contradições da realidade, coerentemente com a luz da dialética, para ajuntar o nosso quinhão tanto à academia quanto, até certo ponto, à ágora. Aplicando radicalmente (na raiz) os princípios da UNESCO e de uma universidade católica tomamos algumas decisões arriscadas: (1) dispensamos o financiamento externo das pesquisas; (2) elaboramos pesquisas antigamente chamadas de pencil & paper, hoje de microcomputadores, com programas de acesso aberto, privilegiando antes de tudo a massa cinzenta cerebral da equipe; (3) buscamos catalisar o idealismo e o exercício da cidadania de estudantes e professores, que têm oferecido o seu tempo e esforço em troca da aprendizagem e da elaboração orientada de trabalhos de conclusão de cursos (licenciaturas, mestrados e doutoramentos); (4) valemo-nos da categoria legal de voluntário para associar pessoas
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de fora da universidade, numa modesta “escola de pesquisa” (parte considerável deles, algum tempo depois, ingressa em algum programa da instituição); (5) seguimos o compromisso de disseminar os resultados das pesquisas junto ao público “ortodoxo”, isto é, a academia, mas também aos “heterodoxos”, fazendo esforço, nem sempre bem- sucedido, de traduzir o “academês” para outras linguagens. Claro, sem vocação para o suicídio, ficamos de olho nos critérios internos e externos de avaliação e fazemos relatórios povoados de números e referências. Eles até podem impressionar, mas o essencial escorre por entre os dedos da avaliação clássica. Como a avaliação envolve permanente tensão entre as máscaras e a face, ou entre persona e animus/a, cava-se um espaço de liberdade cada vez menor entre elas, que procuramos aproveitar enquanto podemos.
5 Em princípio, obtivemos alguns benefícios: (1) em vez de apenas denunciar, fazemos; (2) não nos ocupamos com longas horas de procedimentos burocráticos para pleitear e prestar contas periódicas de recursos, considerando que é preciso apresentar vários projetos para talvez obter a aprovação de um, ainda assim com frequência abaixo do solicitado; (3) licenciandos, mestrandos e doutorandos não invocam diferenças de status (diante dos horrores da realidade escolar, a melhor alternativa tende a ser o apoio recíproco); (4) abrigamos posições teóricas e metodológicas diferentes, respeitada a coerência em cada projeto de pesquisa, pois este é um princípio óbvio, mas difícil, da democracia; (5) à medida que disseminamos (não só publicamos) os nossos trabalhos, brotam e se cultivam convites, apoios e adesões de quem compartilha ao menos parte dos valores com que nos comprometemos. Este equilíbrio instável nos permite concluir o mais importante: apesar das inúmeras pedras dos caminhos, em que temos tropeçado, caído e levantado, ainda pode existir vida fora da universidade “performática”. É o caso também de outros grupos, pois não somos andorinhas solitárias sem fazer verão. Claro que nenhuma dessas andorinhas é profeta em sua terra, mas já devíamos saber disso há pelo menos dois milênios. Até podemos nos parecer com D. Quixote e Sancho Pança (para completar, dois espanhóis!), mas nosso alvo não se constitui de moinhos de vento.
6 Perseverando nesse guião, com base em escuta contínua, espraiamos nossas pesquisas por diversos temas da cátedra, inclusive o trabalho juvenil e o ensino médio, buscando conjugar duas perspectivas complementares: a do pesquisador gaivota e a do pesquisador arqueólogo. Todavia, no que concerne às violências nas escolas discernimos quatro áreas de pesquisa, desenvolvidas integradamente: (1) as normas sociais; (2) a gestão escolar; (3) as relações sociais entre alunos; (4) os professores e futuros professores. Valemo-nos principalmente de estudos de caso, inclusive múltiplos, considerando que esta é uma alternativa propícia à iniciação de pesquisadores. Na impossibilidade de esgotar resultados e implicações (Gomes e outros, 2009; Galvão e outros, 2010), apresentamos abaixo constatações selecionadas.
Normas e anomia
7 O conhecimento não científico de educadores e estudantes levantou-nos uma “lebre”: em um período de pós-modernidade ou de modernidade líquida, de limites difusos e de busca de conceituação da liberdade, as normas seriam nítidas e relativamente consensuais? Ou, nos termos de Durkheim (1926), estabelecem-se situações anômicas? A pesquisa mostrou, primeiro, que as violências tendem a ser “democráticas”, isto é, ocorrentes, ainda que com diferenças, em escolas públicas e particulares, independente
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do nível socioeconômico dos alunos (Gomes e outros, 2006). Todavia, as manifestações e o tratamento dispensados pelas particulares era preventivo e cuidadoso, tendo em vista, inclusive, preservar a sua reputação e minimizar eventuais perdas financeiras. Selecionando três escolas consideradas bem-sucedidas, uma pública, uma particular leiga e outra confessional, aprofundamos a questão das normas junto tanto a professores quanto alunos (Oliveira e Gomes, 2004; Fernandes, 2006). Reiterando o caráter “democrático” das violências, foi constatada a falta de consenso sobre a definição e a gravidade da violência em cada um dos grupos e também entre eles. Educadores e estudantes buscaram subestimar ou negar o caráter violento das suas próprias condutas. Portanto, o que muitos desconsideravam violência ofenderia número ponderável de docentes e discentes, enquanto as sanções correspondentes seriam consideradas injustas pelos agressores. As violências simbólicas, inclusive manifestações de preconceitos, foram mais difíceis de ser percebidas. Em face da sua menor tangibilidade, a admissão delas é mais facilmente negociável entre docentes e discentes, o que abre caminho para se trivializarem. Nesses desvãos, medra o silêncio das vítimas, obedecendo à lei dos mais fortes (Bosacki, 2005). Nessas escolas, havia praxes de conduta, mas não códigos claros, muito menos fixados com a participação dos alunos. Por sua vez, outras pesquisas, sobre estabelecimentos considerados bem- sucedidos, destacam que a fixação de normas claras e consistentes e a certeza de sanção caso elas sejam violadas constituem garantia de um clima de trabalho e paz necessário para alcançar altos resultados na avaliação externa (Marques, 2012; Machado, s.d.). Deve ficar claro que as normas não são uma panaceia e a questão não se reduz à sua existência e nitidez ou não. Elas resultam de uma cultura escolar que envolve uma dinâmica de valores, atitudes, comportamentos e conhecimentos que emergem da interação social e conduzem ao afloramento das normas como resultado, passando a contribuir com as correspondentes sanções, em mão dupla, sanções sobre essa mesma cultura escolar.
Burocracia e carisma na gestão
8 As investigações realizadas confirmam o caráter estratégico dos gestores, como líderes, para superar a violência e promover o êxito escolar. Carreira (2005) analisou a relação entre a gestão e a violência, concluindo que as ações para lidar com este fenômeno não são estanques e centralizadas na figura do gestor, já que elas devem perpassar o perfil da gestão democrática e dialogada em todos os níveis. Este e outros trabalhos reiteram o valor de uma atmosfera de encorajamento, altas exigências e tratamento pessoal, em que educadores e educandos se sintam pessoas, em vez de números na multidão (Gomes, 2005). Por isso mesmo, os gestores não podem ser ingênuos, nem abrir mão da sua autoridade, no sentido weberiano do termo (Weber, 1999; 2004). Ao contrário, a autoridade precisa ser cuidadosamente construída e confirmada a cada momento, sem confundir-se com o poder arbitrário. Ademais, a autoridade não pode ser estritamente burocrática, mas, fundamentando a sua legitimidade nos critérios e normas racionais- legais, precisa de profundas dimensões carismáticas (Dubet, 2003). Com estas condições, gestores e docentes tecem um clima escolar envolvente, capaz de superar violências e promover o aproveitamento discente.
9 Este e outros aspectos foram analisados por uma pesquisa avaliativa, quanti-qualitativa, de cinco escolas públicas, situadas em diferentes etapas de um projeto de segurança
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escolar, todas localizadas em áreas de baixo índice de desenvolvimento humano e de elevada criminalidade. Integrando análise documental, observação, entrevistas semiestruturadas, questionários e grupos focais, o trabalho envolveu ao todo 871 alunos do quinto ao oitavo ano de escolaridade, 111 professores, 15 gestores e conselheiros escolares e oito policiais.
10 Gomes e Lira (2010) focalizaram o clima escolar, verificando que quatro estabelecimentos, onde as violências eram frequentes e graves, apresentavam uma hierarquia piramidal, com clara distinção de papéis, particularmente entre o gestor e a sua equipe, isto é, entre aqueles que “pensavam” (chefes) e os “demais”, a saber, aqueles que executavam (subordinados). Na tentativa de estabelecer ordem, os diretores, em especial, se atribuíam a função de aplicar sanções a alunos expulsos de sala de aula, nos termos regimentais, frequentemente com o envio de comunicações escritas aos responsáveis. Os registros escritos tinham escassa utilidade, ao passo que os impactos das reiteradas punições se desgastavam como sabonetes. Em princípio — e só em princípio — eles se apegavam ao Regimento Unificado da rede pública para organizar o funcionamento das escolas, apego que custava caro à coletividade, já que, quanto mais buscava a legitimidade burocrática, mais a prática se desviava do tipo ideal. Muitas decisões eram tomadas de modo improvisado, casuístico e reativo, no fogo da sucessão de problemas críticos e repetitivos, em face da fragilidade dessas organizações e da vulnerabilidade de seu contexto, cujos problemas sociais contribuíam para aumentar a confusão e a ambiguidade organizacional. Estas condutas dos gestores influenciavam negativamente as percepções dos demais membros (subordinados). Na prática, apresentavam objetivos pouco consistentes e mal definidos, efetuavam procedimentos improvisados e, diante dos enganos acumulados, os desconsideravam e procuravam ocultá-los da comunidade escolar. Já que não se escondem grandes dinossauros, numerosos desvios das normas alteravam informalmente a organização e o funcionamento dos estabelecimentos, configurando-se a anarquia organizada ou sistema caótico, com participação fluida dos atores. Assim, a imagem organizacional dessas unidades (Costa, 1996) se enquadrava mais na dimensão burocrática, embora muitas características as identificassem como “anarquias organizadas”, recorrendo à “hipocrisia organizacional” para tentar legitimar-se (Brunsson, 2007).
11 Em contraste, uma das escolas atingira tal nível de violência que, um ano antes da coleta de dados, assumira nova diretora. Esta, ainda que não tivesse superado parte dos problemas, organizara uma gestão participativa, em que os poderes eram compartilhados, de modo a responsabilizar os diversos atores, enquanto os processos decisórios tornaram-se relativamente transparentes. Em vez de ancorar-se no “gabinete”, símbolo da burocracia oficial, circulava pela escola e conversava com alunos, docentes e funcionários. A liderança carismática da gestora buscava envolver a todos, causando reações positivas dentro e fora do estabelecimento. Ao fazer uso da sua autonomia, motivou e responsabilizou os participantes da escola, as famílias e a comunidade no cumprimento de suas atribuições. Perseverante nos seus objetivos, aos poucos superava grande parte das resistências, até porque obtinha resultados tangíveis, contrastantes com a situação anterior. Aos poucos, o clima escolar se modificou, desestimulando violências. Desta forma, este estabelecimento se aproximava mais da imagem da escola democrática (Costa, 1996).
12 Conquanto o gestor não seja o “salvador da pátria”, ficou claro que pode interferir no clima do estabelecimento, contribuindo para superar as violências, por meio de um
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trabalho conjunto. Concluímos que gerir uma escola exige um conjunto de características pessoais para alcançar resultados satisfatórios. No entanto, verificamos que atualmente os gestores na maioria das vezes assumem grandes responsabilidades sem ter qualidades básicas e, mesmo, consciência da complexidade da organização escolar e das suas funções, administrando-a com improvisações que conduzem a mais violências nas escolas.
Opressor vs oprimido, oprimido-opressor
13 “Dizei-me com quem andas e eu te direi quem és.” Nos dias de hoje, este dito popular se encaixa como uma luva na percepção do comportamento de grande parte dos jovens. Com as relações sociais tomando características líquidas ou etéreas, criar vínculos sólidos se torna grande desafio. Neste cenário, as escolas precisariam cultivar a autonomia para construir relações sociais pacíficas. Entretanto, a mesma pesquisa acima retratou a prática da pedagogia do opressor, pela qual prevaleciam o monólogo dos educadores, os currículos conteudistas, a avaliação reprodutiva e, reinando sobre tudo isso, a falta de significado para a vida (Freire, 1992).
14 Focalizando as escolas acima, mais pormenorizadamente as relações discentes, Lima e Gomes (2012) constataram que os quatro estabelecimentos cuja administração mais se aproximava da burocracia revelaram a prática da educação bancária, em situação de precariedade: de um lado do abismo que os separava, os educadores estavam acuados, enquanto, do outro lado, alinhavam-se educandos em busca da sobrevivência. Sob permanente risco de fracasso, estes conjugavam o currículo escolar com o currículo da rua, o último amplamente praticado nos pátios, corredores, banheiros e salas de aula, bem como nos arredores da escola.
15 O currículo da rua incluía a aprendizagem da violência e das estratégias de defesa e ataque, uma vez que, a capacidade de defesa em parte era avaliada pelo poder de efetuar ataques. Significativo e imperioso para a sobrevivência, a aprendizagem deste currículo não admitia falhas, ao contrário do currículo escolar; assim, este último se tornava acessório e o primeiro primordial. Como espelhos mais ou menos elaborados das hierarquias dentro e fora da escola, conforme Freire (1992) esclarece, alguns alunos oprimidos emergiam como opressores dos seus próprios colegas e podiam tornar-se mais cruéis que os dominadores. Neste contexto, comportamentos agressivos ganhavam contornos que variavam da moralidade à glorificação, transformando os pátios escolares em campos de batalhas. Não parecendo haver saída fora da opressão, a violência dentro e fora da escola abria caminho para alguns se erigirem como “senhores” em relação aos seus colegas.
16 Como a violência preocupava toda a comunidade e ninguém estava livre de vivenciá-la, formar grupos constituía imperativo categórico, na medida em que a sua função era proteger e, ao mesmo tempo, praticar violências. Ficar fora era tornar-se ainda mais vulnerável, eis porque o pertencimento social era não só um desejo, mas um imperativo de sobrevivência. Assim, a construção dos grupos de adolescentes na maioria das vezes começava fora da escola, desencadeada pelo medo e falta de segurança no trajeto para o estabelecimento. Esta organização grupal se mantinha no interior da escola, trazendo do exterior não apenas a composição, mas conceitos morais, violências e outros aprendizados a serem compartilhados, ressignificados e exportados para a sociedade sob novas formas.
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17 Bombardeados pela média e pelas cenas do seu próprio bairro, a violência se tornava fio condutor das relações sociais entre os alunos, deixando embaçada a compreensão ética e dificultando a diferenciação tanto do bem e do mal quanto do bom e do mau clima escolar. Com a naturalização crescente da violência, atos recreativos se confundiam com agressões, tornando o comportamento violento ato moralmente positivo na visão de muitos alunos. Neste labirinto relacional, os grupos de colegas disputavam constantemente a imposição de seus signos e poderes no ambiente escolar. Estas disputas tendiam a preservar os líderes de cada grupo, pois, como notou Hegel (2003), o processo de dominação se mostrava como via de mão dupla: o “escravo” dependia das ordens do “senhor” e o “senhor” dependia do “escravo”. Nas relações fenomenológicas estas ligações também se mostravam vinculadas: os opressores não se envolviam diretamente nos problemas, enviando um oprimido para “resolvê-los”. O “escravo”, a serviço do “senhor”, não se mostrava consciente deste ato de subordinação. Este foi um dos pontos de convergência das entrevistas (individuais e grupais), em que os alunos afirmaram que os líderes das gangues quase nunca estavam pessoalmente presentes nos conflitos, mandando colegas no seu lugar. Sob estes aspectos, as relações de poder criavam hierarquias sociais informais dentro e fora das escolas. As violências ganhavam contornos de dominação e glorificação, transformando os mais agressivos e os praticantes de roubos e furtos em exemplos de liderança. Nestas escolas, particularmente numa, em situação de maior vulnerabilidade, os opressores não impunham apenas comportamentos violentos aos oprimidos: a linguagem, as roupas, os rótulos e até as amizades eram selecionadas pelos “senhores” dos grupos. Pertencer tinha um custo. Qualquer semelhança com as escolas de gueto dos Estados Unidos (Levy, 1970) ou com a organização de maras e pandillas na América Central (p. ex., Rocha e Rodgers, 2008) não é mera coincidência.
18 Com as violências se alastrando pelos pátios escolares, nem professores, nem diretores conseguiam escapar da coerção imposta pelos grupos discentes. Vitimados ou sob ameaça, muitos buscavam soluções de “compromisso”, traduzidas em omissões no processo educativo. Jovens alunos aproveitavam as ausências para disputar violentamente o controle dos pátios escolares, corredores, banheiros e outras dependências. Assim, o espaço da escola era fragmentado por centros de poder, enquanto o sentido de pertencimento aos grupos levava a palma sobre o de pertencimento à escola.
19 A luta pela dominação aparecia em diversas instâncias: na perspectiva de Hegel (2003), no campo das consciências, pela luta da perspectiva dominante; para Nietzsche (2006), a questão do poder por meio do discurso, enquanto, para Weber (2004), a “vantagem do pequeno número” nas disputas engendrava reduzido número de responsáveis por elaborar regras e decidir como seriam aplicadas e mantidas. Assim, as ações de massa e rebeldia em princípio poderiam ser facilmente tanto concretizadas quanto reprimidas, pois, com menos pessoas para tomar decisões, as ações podiam ser mais rápidas.
20 Nas discussões sobre os resultados, levantou-se que um fator a colaborar com o tônus da violência escolar pode ser o aumento da socialização horizontal, indicado por Castells (2008) como o crescimento do convívio intergeracional. Este fenômeno estimula a vivência entre os grupos de jovens, que passam a elaborar e a impor suas próprias regras de convívio e pertencimento, travando intermináveis disputas pela aquisição de poder, conforme já sugeria a pesquisa clássica de Coleman (1963). Como resultado, estaria a escola transformando-se em um laboratório de violências? O
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aumento da socialização entre os jovens e da sua violência estaria relacionado com o afastamento familiar e docente?
21 Por outro lado, a sociedade hoje tende a abandonar as estruturas piramidais, com hierarquia crescente de autoridade, para manifestar-se horizontalmente e em rede (Castells, 2008). Nas escolas, a omissão de diretores e professores perante os fenômenos de violência pode desestruturar a cadeia hierárquica da organização burocrática, fazendo com que os grupos de estudantes passem a disputar entre eles o poder sobre o território, como ocorre com as gangues fora da escola. Com isso, a violência tem livre acesso, como uma espécie de fatalidade social e moral, infundindo medo aos que tentam não se envolver.
Rostos da violência
22 Conquanto os rostos dos chefes nem sempre sejam facilmente reconhecíveis pela escola, alguns alunos, mais extrovertidos e menos poderosos, são detectados como autores reincidentes de infrações à disciplina. Com frequência, eles apresentam condutas violentas, acumulam punições e são transferidos de uma escola para a outra. Uma pesquisa naturalística em conclusão, em escolas públicas de uma cidade de tamanho médio de Minas Gerais, analisa este doloroso processo, por meio de observação, análise documental e entrevistas com os alunos, seus colegas, pais e educadores, visando a traçar histórias de vida. Deve-se frisar que esta pesquisa em particular não versa sobre a organização do poder entre os estudantes. Então, como se delineiam os rostos desses alunos destacados como causadores de “problemas”?
23 Dentre os resultados salientaram-se três histórias de vida, com diferentes trajetórias escolares destes alunos: uma menina, com dez anos de idade, estudante do quinto ano de escolaridade, e dois rapazes, com 14 e 18 anos de idade, plurirrepetentes, o primeiro matriculado num programa de aceleração da aprendizagem, e o segundo no 11.º ano de escolaridade. Apesar do baixo nível de renda das suas famílias, todos tiveram acesso à escola pública desde a educação infantil e moravam com os pais.
24 O primeiro rosto comum que se distingue a partir dos rostos individuais é o do rótulo (Becker, 1991) que, uma vez colado no aluno, pode gerar profecias autorrealizadoras (Rist, 2007). Em apenas cinco anos de escolaridade, esta menina teve o seu percurso escolar fragmentado e comprometido. Múltiplas transferências, três escolas em cinco anos, construíram seu rótulo negativo, tornando cada vez mais difícil a sua adaptação. Considerada aluna inteligente e criativa, desde o segundo ano de escolaridade foi estigmatizada como criança “sem limites”, porque não seguia as normas escolares. Em sala de aula apresentava argumentos racionais que levavam os professores a se sentirem provocados, não se submetia ao seu mando e tinha dificuldade de se relacionar com colegas, praticando bullying.
25 As situações registradas de maior gravidade em que se envolveu foram: agressão física a uma professora e um ato de vandalismo. A primeira ocorreu após uma situação de conflito não resolvida pelo diálogo. A aluna, então com nove anos de idade, agrediu e foi agredida fisicamente pela professora em sala de aula. Esta afirmou ter agido apenas em sua própria defesa. A segunda aconteceu numa festa, cerca de um ano depois. A professora, talvez na contracorrente do estigma, revelou certa ingenuidade: ausentou- se da sala de aula por alguns minutos, quando a estudante incentivou a turma a jogar
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refrigerante uns nos outros. Ao lançar o jorro de uma garrafa para cima, atingiu uma lâmpada e quebrou-a, espalhando os cacos pela dependência, com risco para todos.
26 O segundo rosto é o da negligência pedagógica. Um jovem, após oito anos na mesma escola, arrastava consigo o conceito de “aluno-problema”. Nos anos iniciais ele fora considerado excelente aluno, com “boa” conduta. Entretanto, ao ingressar no sexto ano de escolaridade, mudou o seu comportamento. Foi reprovado, embora considerado pelos professores aluno inteligente, com grande capacidade de aprendizagem. Com frequência entrava em confronto verbal com os professores, desafiava-os e não cumpria as atividades em sala de aula. O envolvimento com um grupo de colegas indisciplinados, também reprovados, foi determinante para a mudança de comportamento. Isso confirma que o grupo de colegas pode incentivar o apelo aos excessos, embora também moderá-los na busca dos limites. Ano após ano, os livros de ocorrência da escola mostravam que o aluno se envolvia em várias situações de indisciplina, vandalismo, desacato, agressões físicas e ameaças a servidores. Entretanto, não houve registros de medidas de intervenção eficazes e de acordo com a legislação educacional para reverter essa situação.
27 Esta trajetória discente, que parece não ser uma exceção, pode ser considerada como uma das faces da negligência pedagógica, outro tipo de violência implícita que conduz a histórias de fracasso escolar. Numa abordagem restrita, ela se constitui do descuido ou omissão na realização de intervenções necessárias para que ocorra a aprendizagem dos valores, atitudes, comportamentos e conteúdos que a escola precisa e deve ensinar, o que conduz parte dos seus alunos ao fracasso escolar. Enquanto a violência física deixa sequelas físicas e a simbólica sequelas emocionais, a negligência pedagógica deixa efeitos indeléveis, sequelas na aprendizagem, na formação e na informação, comprometendo o percurso escolar do aluno e mesmo as suas perspectivas de futuro profissional.
28 Em contraste, o terceiro rosto a manifestar-se é o da esperança (Freire, 1992). O segundo rapaz, do 11.º ano de escolaridade, começou a apresentar comportamentos agressivos ao mudar de escola, no 6.º ano, culminando com a reprovação. De acordo com os registros, foi considerado aluno “com dificuldade em aprender os conteúdos curriculares”. Repetidamente se envolvia em agressões físicas com seus pares, até ser lavrada uma ocorrência policial. A escola lhe comunicou que o próximo passo seria a transferência de estabelecimento. Em face desta crise, ele ingressou numa escola de Muay Thai, luta marcial, com rigoroso código de ética, estabelecido pelos mestres aos seus discípulos, segundo rígida hierarquia social. A prática do esporte foi decisiva para a mudança de seu comportamento: ele não mais se envolveu em atos de indisciplina ou violência na escola. Como na obra recente de Barrère (2011), a educação fora da escola desenvolveu um currículo informal consistente e muito mais rigoroso que o do estabelecimento de ensino. A formação do caráter derivou de um conjunto de ações dos educadores extraescolares, que estabeleceram valores e hierarquia, sob pena, em caso mais grave, de expulsão do membro do grupo. A escola pública, universal e leiga não fora capaz de alcançar com relativo sucesso essas finalidades e objetivos, realçando que a educação ultrapassa amplamente os “muros” da escola (Caliman, 2008). No entanto, cabe recordar que essa escola por princípio não pode expulsar os alunos, como uma atividade esportiva, nem estabelecer certos valores ou hierarquias sociais.
29 Ao analisar o contexto das escolas em que esses alunos estudavam, verificamos que algumas formas de organização pedagógica e administrativa contribuíam para gerar o
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desvio e as formas de abordá-los (Becker, 1991), por meio de alternativas para controlar os alunos (Foucault, 1998), frequentemente sem obter êxito. Isso mostra que a escola pode transformar-se numa espécie de laboratório de prática de violências (Lopes, 2005) ou “fábrica de delinquentes” (Moignard, 2008). Violência e fracasso escolar caminham lado a lado, incidindo sobre muitos alunos e construindo os rostos da violência. Meninos e rapazes, negros, pobres, cujos pais possuem baixa escolaridade, são os mais atingidos em seu percurso escolar e ficam enclausurados no ensino fundamental, predominando a face das masculinidades e da afirmação individual e grupal pela violência, em especial física. Quando falha a gestão de conflitos na escola e as violências persistem, os mais atingidos são os próprios alunos, reprovados, transferidos ou evasores. Se conseguem concluir o ensino fundamental, acumulam grande atraso escolar, o que, em vista do rosário de fracassos e dos custos de oportunidade crescentes, se torna um obstáculo para ingressarem no ensino médio. Só lhes resta aceitar trabalhos, quando os encontram, que não requerem a conclusão desse nível de ensino. Então, o rosto do fracasso escolar se transfigura no rosto da exclusão social, dando continuidade a um círculo vicioso entre gerações.
A expansão vertical
30 As violências nas escolas parecem expandir-se em muitos países, pelo menos no sentido de serem praticadas e de vitimarem grupos etários mais e menos jovens, não se restringindo à chamada crise da adolescência. Com o protagonismo das crianças e a emergência do pré-adolescente (Glevarec, 2009), têm surgido pesquisas sobre a escola primária, talvez sobre fatos que antes não acontecessem na mesma proporção (p. ex., Carra, 2009). Estes são indícios de que a violência se expande para faixas etárias mais novas e níveis iniciais de escolaridade. Por outro lado, a violência na educação superior, conhecida desde as universidades medievais, parece assumir novas feições, o que constitui indício de que ultrapassa os limites da educação básica. Para isso podem contribuir o prolongamento da escolaridade e a extensão do tempo de espera da juventude, ainda mais com a crise econômica internacional iniciada em 2008. Nesse sentido, Galland (1997) cunhou o conceito de pós-adolescência e hoje não é o único a reconhecer novos perfis dos jovens em prolongado tempo de espera.
31 Como se delineia essa realidade no Brasil? Os jovens estudantes de nível superior também estendem a sua permanência nesse limbo? Com a democratização educacional, têm eles dificuldade de aprender o desempenho do papel de estudante, ainda mais se não contam com o mesmo capital cultural dos colegas de outras origens sociais? Para responder a estas e outras indagações, iniciou-se um projeto, cuja primeira etapa consistiu de uma investigação, de caráter descritivo e exploratório, com abordagem quali-quantitativa, sobre três instituições de educação superior, em São Luís do Maranhão. Indagamos sobre as percepções de professores sobre violências praticadas em sala de aula por seus alunos, utilizando-se um questionário e entrevistas semiestruturadas. Estas instituições foram selecionadas pela sua tendência a recepcionarem estudantes em ascensão social e educacional, mas que dificilmente atravessariam o funil das instituições públicas e gratuitas, mais seletivas. A amostra, de conveniência, envolveu 24 professores, oito de cada uma das unidades abordadas.
32 Os resultados indicaram a polissemia do conceito de violência para os docentes, porém, estabelecido um consenso, verificou-se significativo número de episódios de violência,
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com a predominância de incivilidades, isto é, frequentes atos de desrespeito que, com a sua acumulação, perturbam o processo de ensino-aprendizagem e o clima da sala de aula. Quanto aos motivos atribuídos ao fenômeno, os professores apontaram, em especial, a desestruturação familiar, com a adoção de novos valores pelos estudantes. Entre estes, destacou-se a assunção do papel de cliente, isto é, de cliente pagante que deveria ser atendido em seus desejos, conforme as leis do mercado. Esta soma de microviolências em interação gerou desestímulo e frustração para um grupo ponderável de professores (Caldas, 2012).
33 A ocorrência de incivilidades incidia mais no período matutino que noturno. Tal diferença foi atribuída à idade e aos papéis sociais exercidos pelos discentes: os primeiros, mais jovens e nem sempre trabalhadores, tinham maiores dificuldades de aprender o que Coulon (1997) e outros pesquisadores, como Maulini (2009), chamam de métier de estudante. Os participantes da pesquisa em nenhum momento mencionaram a falta de capital cultural das classes médias ascendentes, que passaram a ter acesso aos estudos superiores, mas, sim, a fragilidade em geral da educação básica e as dificuldades de transitar desta para a educação superior, nas formas de agir, pensar e sentir. Alguns docentes, jovens, fizeram sua autocrítica, considerando-se despreparados emocionalmente para uma situação em que deixaram de ser os depositários do conhecimento. Por isso, é interessante refletir sobre alterações da formação inicial e continuada de docentes de nível superior, bem como atividades que facilitem a aprendizagem do papel de estudante.
O mal-estar docente
34 As descontinuidades entre a formação do magistério e a realidade escolar são evidências antigas no Brasil (p. ex., Pereira, 1963). O choque da realidade, a lenta aquisição do conhecimento empírico (e não científico) sobre a prática do magistério e as estratégias para ganhar o “controle de turma”, isto é, exercer o “trabalho sujo” do disciplinamento, na divisão moral do trabalho docente Payet, 1997), especialmente em áreas socialmente menos favorecidas, constituem variações em torno de um mesmo tema: o hiato entre teorias e práticas. Este, que transcende o caso brasileiro, se relaciona à labilidade dos conhecimentos e das concepções filosóficas sobre o ensinar e o aprender. Como o processo educativo está longe de reduzir-se ao know-how, mas envolve amplamente o know-why e o know-what, nada se reduz a uma técnica cirúrgica ou a um medicamento testado para certa moléstia, como na medicina. Se estas diferenças tornam o professor um profissional com relativa autonomia, os sentimentos de insegurança se manifestam insidiosamente.
35 Foi o que refletiu uma pesquisa qualitativa, com estudantes de magistério, já em período de estágio docente, por meio de grupos focais constituídos por curso de licenciatura (Gomes e Pereira, 2009). Angustiados pela média e pelos relatos pessoais de vitimação de violência escolar, os futuros educadores centraram as suas críticas na frágil ponte entre academia e realidade. Ainda que capazes de compreender teorias psicológicas, sociológicas e outras, eles se sentiam aturdidos diante da realidade, como se, em grande parte, as teorias, em vez de expressarem a empiria, integrassem uma torre de marfim, divorciada das diferentes formas de protagonismo dos alunos e das suas condições sociais. Aliás, seus currículos formativos eram tão compartimentados quanto os que deveriam executar enquanto mestres. Em face dos sentimentos de
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impotência e incompetência profissionais, os jovens licenciandos, muitos possuídos pelo idealismo, não queriam desaguar no lugar-comum de culpar o aluno, de atirar à vítima do fracasso escolar a culpa pelo seu próprio drama. Em meio à angústia, à perspectiva de uma longa socialização profissional na prática, por intermédio do ensaio e erro, sem apoio suficiente de supervisores e colegas, eles propuseram uma formação que enlaçasse mais intimamente os conhecimentos acadêmicos e as práticas, indo e retornando, discutindo as experiências e relacionando-as ao currículo formal, sem recorrerem a receitas e fórmulas. Em outros termos, propuseram uma pedagogia dialogada mais presente e um contato mais íntimo e mais longo com a prática, num continuum melhor construído.
36 A inquietude dos participantes da pesquisa constitui um potencial de mudança que em grande parte se esfuma em face das constrições da burocracia educacional, com o agravante de que, no Brasil, os cursos de magistério, pelos modestos níveis de prestígio social e atratividade, se situam nos status mais baixos da estratificação de carreiras da educação superior. Portanto, longe de um círculo virtuoso, o magistério enfrenta uma situação crítica e pouco alvissareira, como em inúmeros países do mundo.
37 Passando aos professores, depois de graduados e socializados profissionalmente, a pesquisa avaliativa antes citada, de cinco escolas públicas em áreas vulneráveis do Distrito Federal, constatou mais alguns aspectos do complexo jogo de espelhos a que se compara o relacionamento entre educadores e educandos. Ao cotejar dados de ambos estes grupos, verificamos que, além da violência institucional, parte considerável dos professores cometia atos de violência e incivilidade contra os alunos, às vezes sem ter consciência disso, pois faltava clareza de normas. Com isso, parte dos docentes contribuía para agravar o clima conflitivo e se deslegitimavam como exemplos de adultos. Uma das formas antiéticas e perversas de coação era subtrair pontos do rendimento discente como punição pelo comportamento. Aliás, as relações entre alunos e professores eram intermediadas por currículos compartimentados, executados predominantemente por meio de exposições orais, cujos conteúdos deviam ser reproduzidos em provas, testes e trabalhos. Em outras palavras, as relações tinham como bússola a aludida pedagogia bancária.
38 Com o espírito crítico de adolescentes, os alunos, em particular nos grupos focais, indicaram comportamentos mais ou menos sutis dos seus professores que patenteavam suas dificuldades profissionais e pessoais de tratar conflitos como adultos, com isso devolvendo e ampliando a violência. Outra prática antiética era a de encarregar alunos de vigiar e denunciar os seus próprios colegas, na tentativa de manter a ordem. Desconsiderando as lealdades grupais, a busca da autonomia e os riscos de violência sofridos por esses alunos, estas táticas contribuíam para agravar ainda mais as relações de opressão entre estudantes, acima focalizadas.
39 Os discentes, por sua vez, também reconheceram suas faltas e declararam que as fontes mais temidas de violência eram os próprios colegas, ao passo que mantinham relacionamento positivo com a maioria dos docentes. Entretanto, as avaliações mais negativas se referiram aos diretores, que, em quatro dos cinco estabelecimentos, exerciam o papel de aplicadores de sanções (Ferreira e Gomes, 2009).
40 Na exploração de outro ângulo do mesmo jogo de espelhos, Aguiar e Almeida (2008) pesquisaram e continuam a pesquisar o sofrimento psíquico dos professores, em contato com a violência e a falta de escuta. Afinal, o controle dos alunos, ou “trabalho sujo” na divisão moral do trabalho docente (sale boulot, segundo Payet, 1997), é uma das
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capacidades ao mesmo tempo mais difíceis e mais requeridas pelos seus pares. O adoecimento do educador provém das dificuldades ou impossibilidade de atender às expectativas ao seu redor, inclusive as suas próprias na escolha da carreira, do contato com a violência extra e intraescolar, das dificuldades de aprendizagem discente, do excessivo envolvimento com os problemas pessoais dos seus alunos, da falta de fronteiras claras para o comportamento dos alunos na escola e na sociedade (mais uma vez a anomia) e, como os estudantes, a repetição, na relação transferencial, dos vínculos objetais vivenciados na infância. Com isso, o mal-estar tem no absenteísmo docente uma das modalidades de defesa, muitas vezes motivado por efetivo quadro de depressão. Estas dificuldades se tornam mais um fator da menor atratividade da carreira docente (Palazzo e Gomes, s.d.). Em suma, com as transformações sociais e escolares, as deficiências da formação inicial e continuada, antes toleráveis ou suportáveis, passam a ter repercussões mais profundas, com graves perdas individuais e coletivas, que demandam mudanças compatíveis com o contexto histórico-social, que já não podem mais ser recusadas.
Conclusões
41 Ao levantar em vários trechos o véu que encobre a realidade, em busca de decifrar a esfinge das violências escolas, a principal constatação é que pouco sabemos da esfinge e ainda continuamos longe de decifrá-la. A humildade, não raro obscurecida dentro e fora da academia, é a maior amiga tanto da ciência quanto das políticas públicas. É amplamente sabido que o mundo contemporâneo, bem como as concepções de infância e adolescência, tem mudado dramaticamente, com a emergência da sociedade de risco, pós-modernidade ou modernidade tardia (Sebastião, Alves e Campos, 2010). Não devendo esparramar nossas conclusões por estes vastos territórios, estas conclusões se centram na escola e na sua capacidade de mudança.
42 Nesse sentido, alguns aspectos se unem ao longo de uma pluralidade de fios de Ariadne. Adeus à modernidade, quando o herói contava com um único fio, linear, que contava com princípio, meio e fim. Na complexidade reinante, estes fios se enovelam, confundem e exigem de Teseu novas capacidades para compreender mensagens no labirinto e fazer face ao Minotauro.
43 Os fios podem enredar-se, mas claramente interligam uma pluralidade de temas. Apesar de sucessivas advertências e propostas ao longo da história recente, a escola insiste em manter os seus pressupostos e expectativas de grande parte do século XIX: atribui-se o papel de um farol para disseminar o conhecimento, quando há muito deixou de ser a fonte que representava; os professores, formados basicamente do mesmo modo que os seus próprios professores, continuam diante do quadro (de giz ou eletrônico, não importa), transmitindo conteúdos cada vez mais especializados nos seus compartimentos curriculares; por fim, a avaliação permanece sendo reprodutiva, com a agravante hoje dos testes padronizados aplicados por atores externos. Estes são alguns “factores de inércia” (Sebastião, Alves e Campos, 2003), tanto em Portugal como no Brasil. É mais fácil agir como sempre se agiu, pois os custos imediatos de mudar são menores, porém outros custos, de curto e longo prazo, são muito elevados. Os alunos e a sociedade hoje são diferentes, desenvolvendo as suas teias diversificadas de subjetividades e constituindo as suas próprias formas de agir, pensar e sentir dentro e fora da escola. O professor continua a supor-se a pessoa que preencherá estas folhas em
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branco, supostamente ansiosas pelo conhecimento intelectual, que hoje conduz cada vez menos à porta do elevador social. Caso não se atribua o papel de D. Quixote, resta- lhe a atuação cínica e/ou o adoecimento psíquico.
44 Pior ainda, em países como o Brasil, ainda se aplicam à escola pressupostos do século XIX, buscando-se atribuir-lhe mais funções e estender a sua jornada. Quanto mais escola, melhor. Se a escola não atinge suas finalidades e objetivos, é porque lhe falta tempo. Então, mais postos docentes, mais pessoal, mais prédios, mais recursos, mais, mais, mais do mesmo. Se o jovem praticou infrações do ponto de vista da lei, o remédio é retornar à escola, juntar-se aos demais estudantes e, assim, restaurar o seu papel de aluno, numa instituição integradora, capaz de realizar milagres. Milagres diante da pobreza, do crime organizado transnacional, das recomposições familiares, das migrações, da falta de trabalho decente e outros. No plano da conveniência, a escola assume funções custodiais, não importando muito a temperatura dentro dela. Se é melhor estar na escola que na rua, estender a jornada letiva torna-se poderoso argumento político-eleitoral.
45 A escola por ora é vista como a salvadora da pátria e desperta entusiasmo como receita simples para os males da sociedade. Com efeito, no Brasil ela é a primeira instituição do Estado a chegar a áreas de miséria, onde a população, sem infraestrutura e outros serviços públicos, dorme em habitações improvisadas, sob lonas ou papelão, nas periferias urbanas. Portanto, acrescentemos mais educação, mais tempo letivo, mais longa jornada, mais componentes curriculares setorizados, mais professores, mais gestores, mais dependências, mais tecnologias (especialmente onde são escassas ou nulas), mais do mesmo. Com isso, contribuímos para aumentar a pressão dentro da panela.
46 Em contraste, o professor é ensinado, independente do nível formativo e dos metros de diplomas e certificados a ele conferidos, que, em linhas gerais, deve continuar fazendo o que seus professores faziam. Apesar das decepções iniciais e da falta de preparo realista, em meio à loteria do ensaio e erro, ele tenta manter-se no pódio, transmitindo e “cobrando” conteúdos, vendo os seus alunos como “imaturos”, incapazes de subjetividade e diálogo. Pouco sabe das dinâmicas grupais que se desenrolam diante dos seus olhos e ouvidos, sem maior segredo, já que o docente até esqueceu a sua infância e adolescência (por sinal, bem diferentes no tempo) e sequer consegue conhecer seus alunos, às vezes em torno de centenas ou do milhar. A formação continuada persiste com os cursos de quase sempre, incrustados, mas não integrados ao curriculum vitae, currículo da vida, por não se centrarem nos problemas escolares efetivamente vividos. Em compensação, para serem palatáveis, podem render pontos no cartório credencialista para “subir” na carreira e conseguir a ansiada reforma, tão esperada como o famoso Godot da peça teatral, que demora a chegar. Nesse drama, a caminho de uma tragédia, juncada de vítimas tanto do lado dos adultos quanto dos jovens, parece que a esta altura já se foram todos os anéis. Agora, vão-se os dedos. São sacrifícios humanos terríveis e gigantescos para manter uma escola paleontológica que mata os seus protagonistas desde que o espetáculo prossiga. Como numa guerra, uns se salvam, outros morrem, outros saem física e mentalmente afetados. Até quando?
47 Como a esperança é uma virtude, cabe olhar para trás e pelo menos refletir sobre as críticas e propostas dos filósofos quando a Revolução Industrial começava a desafiar grandes mudanças. Não se aproveitarão ao pé da letra, mas podem ser bases para nos convencermos e persuadirmos a sociedade de que estamos diante do Minotauro. Como
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expressão da virtude, oriunda da raiz latina força, cabe-nos recordar Machado de Assis (1839-1908), escritor clássico da nossa língua, clássico porque as suas mensagens varam os tempos. Crítico agudo, descendente de escravos africanos, a lutar duramente para inserir-se na sociedade, correspondia-se com o também inquieto Eça de Queirós. Um dos seus sonetos pode ser uma metáfora para a educação hoje. A folha branca, tabula rasa, como os alunos ainda imaginados por seus educadores, pede inspiração ao poeta, que evoca lembranças natalinas da sua infância, “as sensações da sua idade antiga / Naquela mesma velha noite amiga, …” (Machado de Assis, 1901). Contudo, a pena não lhe corresponde, só lhe saindo, afinal, um pequeno e significativo verso: “Mudaria o Natal ou mudei eu?” Certamente mudamos todos, tanto o Natal quanto cada um de nós. Só nos falta, como adultos responsáveis, agir em consonância com as mudanças.
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RESUMOS
O trabalho sumaria os principais resultados de um decênio de pesquisas sobre violências nas escolas no Brasil. As principais constatações são: (1) falta nitidez e coerência das normas sobre a conduta nos grupos docente e discente, sugerindo situações de anomia; (2) a gestão escolar com fortes componentes carismáticos e participativos obteve melhores resultados que a gestão burocrática; (3) em escolas praticantes da “pedagogia bancária”, parte dos alunos oprimidos se tornam opressores dos seus colegas, reproduzindo relações escolares e sociais; (4) a formação dos professores é distante da realidade, mais complexa, levando a profissão à perda de credibilidade e atratividade e os educadores ao sofrimento psíquico. O rumo proposto é o da sintonia da escola com as mudanças do seu tempo, já que se torna cada vez mais difícil manter fórmulas típicas do século XIX.
This article summarises the main results of a decade or so of research projects on forms of violence at schools in Brazil. The main observations it makes are: (1) the rules and standards governing the conduct of both teachers and pupils lack clarity and coherence, which suggests that situations arise in which those rules and standards are disrespected; (2) forms of school management that include strong charismatic and participatory elements got better results than a bureaucratic management style; (3) in schools that practise the “banking” concept of education, some of the oppressed students themselves come to oppress their schoolmates, thereby reproducing certain scholastic and social conditions; (4) teacher training is a long way from reality, which is more complex, and this leads the profession to lose credibility and become less attractive and causes kindergarten and primary teachers to suffer mentally and emotionally. The authors propose that the path forward is to bring schools into harmony with the changes in today’s world, apart from anything else because it is getting more and more difficult to maintain formulae that were typical of the 19th century.
Ce travail récapitule les principaux résultats d’une décennie de recherches sur la violence dans les écoles au Brésil. Les principales constatations sont: (1) manque de clarté et de cohérence des règles de conduite pour les enseignants et les élèves, suggérant des situations anormales; (2) la gestion scolaire à fortes composantes charismatiques et participatives a obtenu de meilleurs résultats que la gestion bureaucratique; (3) dans les écoles qui pratiquent la “ pédagogie bancaire ”, une partie des élèves oppressés deviennent oppresseurs de leurs camarades et reproduisent ainsi les rapports scolaires et sociaux; (4) la formation des enseignants est éloignée de la réalité, plus complexe, ce qui entraîne une perte de crédibilité et d’attractivité de la profession et des
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souffrances psychiques pour les éducateurs. Le chemin proposé est celui de l’adaptation de l’école aux changements de son temps, car il est de plus en plus difficile d’appliquer des formules typiques du XIXe siècle.
El trabajo resumiría los principales resultados de un decenio de pesquisas sobre violencias en las escuelas de Brazil. Las principales constataciones son: (1) falta nitidez y coherencia de las normas de conducta en los grupos docente y alumnado, provocando situaciones de anomia; (2) la gestión escolar con fuertes componentes carismáticos y participativos obtuvo mejores resultados que la gestión burocrática; (3) en escuelas practicantes de la “pedagogía bancaria”, parte de los alumnos oprimidos se vuelven opresores de sus colegas, reproduciendo relaciones escolares y sociales; (4) la formación de los profesores es distante de la realidad más compleja, llevando a la profesión a la pérdida de credibilidad y atracción y a los educadores al sufrimiento psíquico. El rumbo propuesto es la sintonía de la escuela con los cambios de su tiempo, ya que se vuelve cada vez más difícil mantener fórmulas típicas del siglo XIX.
ÍNDICE
Mots-clés: violence scolaire, formation des éducateurs, sociologie de l’école, gestion scolaire, groupes d’égaux Palavras-chave: violência escolar, formação de educadores, sociologia da escola, gestão escolar, grupos de iguais Palabras claves: violencia escolar, formación de educadores, sociología de la escuela, gestión escolar, grupos de pares Keywords: school violence, kindergarten and primary teacher training, sociology of the school, school management, groups of equals
AUTORES
CÂNDIDO ALBERTO GOMES
Cátedra UNESCO de Juventude, Educação e Sociedade da Universidade Católica de Brasília, professor titular fundador do mestrado e doutoramento em educação. E-mail: [email protected]
ADRIANA LIRA
Mestre em educação pela Universidade Católica de Brasília, professora adjunta da mesma universidade, secretária executiva da cátedra UNESCO de Juventude, Educação e Sociedade. E- mail: [email protected]
DIOGO ACIOLI LIMA
Diogo Acioli Lima. Mestre e doutorando em educação da Universidade Católica de Brasília, professor da Universidade Paulista. E-mail: [email protected]
ROSILENE BEATRIZ LOPES
Rosilene Beatriz Lopes. Mestre e doutoranda em educação da Universidade Católica de Brasília, pedagoga da Secretaria de Estado da Criança do Distrito Federal. E-mail: [email protected]
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Safety and peaceful coexistence policies in Latin American schools: human rights perspective Politicas de segurança e coexistência pacífica em escolas latino-americanas: os direitos humanos em perspetiva Politiques de sécurité et de coexistence pacifique dans les écoles latino- américaines: les droits de l'homme en perspective Políticas de seguridad y convivencia en la escuela latinoamericana: la perspectiva de derechos humanos
Ana María Rodino
Background
1 This paper discusses the theoretical framework, methodology and results of the X Inter- American Report on Human Rights Education (IIHR, 2011). This report is part of a broader research program on the development of Human Rights Education (hereafter HRE) being conducted since 2002 in the countries signatory of the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or Protocol of San Salvador (OAS, 1988).1
2 The Inter-American Report on HRE is the result of a set of studies conducted every year simultaneously in 19 countries of the region, following a single design.2 The report collects findings obtained in each country and compares them with the use of a data collection matrix that feeds into a system of indicators. The indicators gauge the performance of variables that reflect changes in the exercise of some critical aspect of the right to HRE over a given period, usually the decade prior to measurement. The report reveals regional and national trends — whether progress, setbacks or stagnation — in legal protection and in political, institutional and operational conditions on the exercise of the right to HRE.
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3 The regulatory foundation of the system of reports is the right to HRE. International standards derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and in the Americas, the Protocol of San Salvador clearly establish the right to HRE as part of the right to education. Therefore, the signatory countries of the Protocol of San Salvador are committed to design a legal and logistic platform for promoting and protecting economic, socil and cultural rights in all their dimensions. This includes the duty to progressively incorporate international human rights provisions into their domestic legislation, design public policies and implement activities to comply with these precepts. The purpose of the Inter-American Report on HRE has been to examine the degree to which policies, initiatives and decisions are consistent with content on the right to HRE, and how much progress has been made in achieving it. Previous reports monitored the inclusion of HRE in education legislation and planning, curriculum, schoolbooks and teacher training. The X Report explores a new domain from a HRE perspective.
Context and justification
4 The term “school environment” covers a vast, complex system that contains diverse components, all of them necessary and relevant for the process of education. The apparently simple expression “school” includes such diverse dimensions and factors as the rules, regulations and public policies that govern education; the different manifestations of the curriculum; pedagogical tools used by the people involved in education; teaching itself; extra-curricular activities for student participation, and other stakeholders in the world of education, especially parents and the community. The progress and outcome of the educational process cannot be understood without considering how these factors fit together, their synergies and tensions. This ecosystem as a whole and its individual components all need to be imbued with the vision, content and practices of HRE.
5 Earlier versions of the Inter-American Report on HRE focused on certain of these components based on recommendations by the IIHR in-house research team and following discussion with Institute authorities. The theme for the X Report, however, originated differently. A request was received from some of the region’s ministries of education to conduct a research targeting a phenomenon that is arousing ever-greater concern among national education authorities: violence in schools.
6 The request reflected a valid and current concern that is germane to the effective exercise of human rights in schools. School-based acts of violence, regardless of their source or severity, constitute violations by certain members of the school community of the human rights of others. From the rights perspective, they must always be identified and reported. Above all, they must be prevented so they do not even occur. Given this request, the Institute decided that the X Report would examine the phenomenon of violence in Latin American schools, particularly violence played out among the main stakeholders in education (between students and teachers, and between students), often known as school violence or intra-school violence.
7 It has become a problem of great concern to the region’s top education authorities, faced with the perception that acts of violence have been on the upswing over the past decade and reaching alarming proportions. The subject is widely discussed in the media and in the marketplace, usually in the absence of any reliable information. There is
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little basis beyond journalistic reports about certain headline-grabbing cases and generic information of questionable credibility taken from the rumor mill. Beyond certain experts, few are familiar with academic studies conducted in the region, which are rarely in the hands of the very people in the education sector who most need them: school administrators, teachers, students and parents.
8 It is important to reframe this issue as a problem of dignity and rights, shedding light on its many different angles with a clear human rights lens and avoiding prejudices and stereotypes, arbitrary apocalyptic hypotheses, groundless opinions and threatening talk of “iron-fisted” crackdowns. The latter is particularly dangerous, not only because research has shown such responses to be ineffective, but also because they tend to condone the violation of certain other human rights in the name of a form of “order” or “peace” defined unilaterally by those who hold power (Krauskopf, 2006; Abad and Gómez, 2008; Rodríguez, 2010).
9 Thus the challenge was taken of examining this problem using the theoretical and methodological framework of the Inter-American Report. The overall purpose was to provide tools that will help people in the education community become more sensitive to the problem, analyze it objectively, take action to prevent it and, if necessary, face up to it without ever losing their human rights perspective and using HRE as a strategy for intervention.
10 This means the theoretical-pedagogical construct needs to be reversed. The educational system should not take on the objective of “fighting violence” per se (a task proper to police and the courts), but instead should plan ways to create and sustain conditions that will guarantee safety and peaceful coexistence in school facilities and education communities, as these goals are clearly in the purview of educators. “Learning to live together” is, in fact, one of the great and undeniable purposes of education.3
11 Living together means more than mere peaceful coexistence among people sharing the same physical space. The United Nations Development Programme, for example, explains it as a social dynamic based on relations of trust and cooperation, in which all people feel like part of a society, enjoy their human rights and experience socially constructed opportunities expressed in part by the State, its rules and its democratic institutions (UNDP, 2007).
12 When educational institutions teach students to live together, manifestations of violence may and in fact do erupt, and the school needs to respond. The school should recognize these manifestations and call them by their name — acts of violence — without ambiguity, because whatever goes unnamed tends to become invisible and cannot be handled clearly or effectively. However, manifestations of violence are serious disruptions of the educational process. Even beyond their particular causes, often external to the school, if they are not contained, they reveal the school’s own limitations and inadequacies for managing, negotiating or constructively transforming conflicts that arise within its walls and among its members.
13 Again, while the school’s institutional mission is not to combat violence, it still needs to recognize the manifestations of violence and work conscientiously to prevent them. It must be able to identify factors that favor violence and heighten the potential for violent acts to occur (risk factors) so as to neutralize them, and find other factors that can reduce the likelihood of violent acts (protection factors), to strengthen them (MEN, MEPC, and OEI, 2005). When necessary, if the school finds itself faced directly with
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episodes of violence, it must handle them using tools consistent with its educational nature and function, always from a rights perspective.
Theoretical framework: school and types of violence
14 The first step for addressing the problems of violence in the school setting (as in overall society) is to banish an initial conceptual error: alluding to violence as if it were a single, uniform phenomenon. Instead we will use the plural expression “types of violence” to cover the highly diverse spectrum of situations and behaviors commonly encapsulated in this term.
15 Expressions of violence in school settings can vary in many ways, such as their relationship to the school, origin, type and degree of severity; such factors are also interwoven with other phenomena from each different socio-historical and geographic context. In Latin America, the problems may range from fairly constrained manifestations of violence such as harassment or bullying among peers, to clear aggression among students, acts of vandalism against school property, mistreatment between teachers and students, taking weapons into schools, open or subtle influences from the drug world, including drug retailing and the presence of gangs, excesses committed by police guards inside or outside the schools, among others (Rodríguez, 2010: 4).
16 Specialized studies use different approaches to classify types of violence in schools, although two particular classification systems are most common: one rates the relationship between violent acts and the school itself, as an institution; the other rates the type and degree of violence. Studies based on the relationship with the school distinguish between (i) violence by or from the school (institutional violence exercised by the school itself or by the education system against its members), (ii) violence toward or against the school (acts that directly target the school, that is, intended to destroy or damage the institution’s infrastructure and legitimacy), and (iii) violence in the school (events inside the school that mirror criminal acts generally occurring on the outside, in society) (Gómes, 2008: 4).
17 Studies based on types and degrees of violence often distinguish between physical violence and symbolic violence, sometimes adding an additional class of less severe behavior they call “incivility” (Gómes, 2008). Other authors use more operational classification systems, identifying five manifestations of violence: (i) vandalism (against school property); (ii) disruptiveness (against school activities); (iii) indiscipline (against the rules); (iv) inter-personal violence (among students, teachers, etc.); and (v) crime (illegal actions subject to criminal consequences) (Rodríguez, 2010).
18 These two classification systems can be combined into a table showing the major expressions of violence in the schools (table 1). Table 1 Preliminary classification of types of school violence
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Forms of school violence are closely associated with phenomena of social transformation and the types of violence experienced by overall society. Today, basic school education has become nearly universal in most of the world, and Latin America is no exception. Public education, once little more than a program proposal and an optional plank in the government platform for whichever authorities happened to be in office, came to be understood as a human right binding on the States. This change triggered a massive process to educate populations characterized by vast socio-cultural diversity. Inequality, inequity and social violence have “invaded” the school, formerly considered a sort of “sanctuary”, an exclusive stronghold for the minorities that owned property and political power in each society (Gomes, 2008: 2).
19 Similarly, the causes and conditions under which different manifestations of violence develop in Latin America vary from region to region, according to Rodríguez (2010). The Southern Cone is experiencing the “consequences of deindustrialization and social breakdown trends” that sidelined broad swaths of the population who had been fully integrated before the recent wave of crisis. Central America is contending with “the legacy of 1980s armed conflicts, limitations of the 1990s peace processes, the impact on economic dynamics of unskilled labor in foreign-owned assembly plants (‘maquilas’), and heavy migration especially into the United States”. Meanwhile, in large countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the explanations seem to be associated more with “the proliferation of powers parallel to the legal structures (drug cartels, armed groups, etc.) in the framework of weakened States and extremely critical structural situations” (Rodríguez, 2010: 3).
20 Nevertheless, above and beyond these differences and peculiarities, the author recognizes a common problem in all the countries of the region: “the widespread establishment of a culture of violence that ‘settles’ nearly all conflicts (even the most minor and irrelevant) by violent means” (Rodríguez, 2010: 3). Education needs to address this very phenomenon and this perspective and attitude toward social life and
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interpersonal relationships. It must begin by understanding the many complexities involved, and it must avoid lapsing into false over-simplifications or stigmatizing stereotypes — both ineffective.
21 Specialized studies have evaluated the many strategies implemented by different countries to fight school- or youth-related violence, attempting to discern which ones have produced results, and which have not. It is generally found that punishment- based strategies (“iron-fist”, “crackdown”, “zero tolerance”, military models) tend to be the least effective and indeed are generally counterproductive, as are strategies to target “vulnerable youth” or to “rehabilitate” offenders and gang members (Krauskopf, 2006; Abad and Gómez, 2008; Rodríguez, 2010). By contrast, strategies that have achieved more and better results are based on prevention, target the overall youth population (they are non-specific), and lay the groundwork for a culture of peace and human rights in the school and society. The study identified certain success factors, such as promoting teamwork, recognizing students as young people and rights-holders, linking education to the world of work, citizenship training and conflict resolution, and presence in the school of other specialists to back up the teachers (guidance counselors, student advisors, etc.) (Acosta, 2008; Abramovay, 2009).
Research domain and hypothesis
22 Literature on the subject reveals the importance of developing educational policies to prevent potential violence. These policies should target the entire student body and be designed to improve the climate in the schools and facilitate daily coexistence. They should be based on human rights values and principles, a culture of peace and democratic citizenship, and rest on the development of self-esteem, communication skills and interpersonal relationships.
23 This research was rooted in the conceptual and political conviction that there is a two- way relationship between safety and peaceful coexistence in the schools and human rights education. On one hand, if members of the education community feel comfortable and safe inside the schools and enjoy interactions based on respect and solidarity, human rights are learned in a practical way. These practices are part of the “hidden curriculum” of every education system, which has at least as much educational value as the overt, explicit curriculum. Daily living teaches the most fundamental human rights values and attitudes: that everyone deserves a sense of dignity; that everyone is a rights-holder and deserves self-esteem; that others have a right to receive consideration and care, and that all are equals in dignity and rights.
24 On the other hand, there is a reciprocal influence. Human rights training for members of the education community encourages more peaceful, democratic and safe interactions for everyone, because HRE builds up the values, attitudes and behaviors that should govern respectful relations among individuals/ rights-holders (freedom, equality, solidarity, peace, justice, tolerance, etc.).
25 In short, a school that works on HRE is contributing to peaceful coexistence and safety, and vice-versa. The two will either grow together or deteriorate together. This is why, if one dimension of school life falls short (such as recurring incidents or situations of some sort of violence), one pedagogical strategy is to tackle the other dimension: rights education. The evidence from studies cited above confirms such an assertion.
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26 This research built on the hypothesis that HRE progress depends on whether the education sector has public policies and strategies for intervention designed to promote safety and peaceful coexistence inside the schools, and whether these policies and strategies are designed and implemented with a focus on rights. The goal was to inquire whether Latin American countries have such policies along with strategies for preventing and managing violence, what they are, how they are grounded and how they are implemented. It should be noted that the theme focuses on the effective exercise of a variety of rights, not only the right to education and to HRE. These rights are directly at play in the school environment: in this case, the right to life, to humane treatment both physically and psychologically, prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, freedom from discrimination, and right to health, participation and due process.
Sources of information, procedures and matrix of variables and indicators
27 Two types of information were collected in the countries. One was information provided by interviews and focus groups with school actors. Its purpose was to offer a contextual, preliminary view of how teachers, principals and parents perceive the current situation of safety and “living together” in the schools — or, to approach it from the opposite angle, how they perceive the situation of violence in the school setting. The other was hard data on policies on the subject compiled at the national ministries of education from documentary institutional information as the preferred source (laws, orders, regulations, empirical data, assessments, evaluations, etc.) For this purpose, a matrix of four variables and 15 indicators was developed together with the suitable means of verification (table 2). Table 2 Research matrix of variables and indicators
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28 The variable Statistical information and assessments was included to verify whether lead entities in the national education sector had access to information on incidents or situations of conflict in the public schools. This empirical foundation provides the essential basis for assessing the real situation of safety and peaceful coexistence in the schools. The indicators point to the existence (or absence) of factual data, procedures for documenting and processing data, and analytical studies of the data.
29 The variable Policies, plans and programs was intended to determine whether education authorities had general policies and strategies for handling the kinds of problems targeted for study. Policies and actions were classified into three levels of generality: guidelines or instructions, plans, and programs or projects. One indicator applied to each level. A crucial fourth indicator asked whether these different types of policies had been designed with a human rights perspective.
30 The variable Policy implementation delved more deeply into the rationale and the expected timetable of public policies; that is, it looked into the activation and implementation of policies. The indicators asked whether basic conditions were in place for implementing such policies: responsible institutional entities, budget, participation by different education stakeholders, informational materials, and training programs.
31 The variable Monitoring and evaluation of policies looked into the completion of the policy cycle, asking how much oversight was exercised over policy implementation, effects and outcomes. The indicators explored whether compliance with policy provisions was subject to any official monitoring, whether evaluations took place and whether results or conclusions were available.
32 Information was collected and analyzed following the standard procedure for the Inter- American Report. Local researchers collected raw material for the study in their countries, following detailed specifications provided by the IIHR in-house team. The
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local researchers were former Institute students and employees of the ministries of education who had participated in previous reports. The raw material was sent to the Institute to be processed and analyzed, together with supporting documentation. For this report, a total of 136 documentary sources were identified and studied.
Results and discussion
Documentary sources consulted
33 Educational policies on matters of peaceful coexistence, safety and violence prevention in schools are still rare in Latin American countries. Moreover, they tend to be overly general, vague and scattered among a plethora of documents of different kinds, difficult to synthesize. To determine how relevant and specific they are, a look at the chronology is enlightening: the most specific, explicit, relevant policies are of recent vintage, most of them having appeared between 2005 and 2010. By contrast, policies developed from the late 1980s through the mid-2000s are general, indirect and reflect the then-common notion of “school discipline”; however, they do include an embryonic perspective of children’s rights inspired by the international adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989).
34 The chronology of the sources also reveals the region’s general tendency to develop policies on this subject that are increasingly direct and explicit. They have been appearing rapidly since around 2004, and the pace has picked up since 2009. As the research report was being written (October 2011), several countries were fully engaged in the process, whether writing policies, discussing them with the education community or testing them on a pilot basis.
35 The results show that national education authorities are paying attention and getting involved, largely as a reaction to specific incidents of school violence, and mobilized by demands and proposals from the public. This complex set of problems is no longer being left entirely in the hands of school principals or teachers, nor is it seen lightly as a simple dichotomy, easy to solve by applying either traditional school disciplinary rules or criminal laws. There is a new understanding that the hopes of building peaceful coexistence in the school environment, guaranteeing that schools are safe and preventing outbreaks of violence that threaten the entire educational community are objectives that deserve special, more profound handling suited to the circumstances of each national and local setting. There is a newly emerging awareness that these matters merit serious consideration and action proposals that arise from within the educational system itself, guided by education authorities but involving all affected groups.
Contexts and perceptions
36 In all the countries studied, teachers and the general public alike are deeply concerned about problems with peaceful coexistence, safety and violence in the schools and feel that these problems are growing steadily. This sense of concern tends to be based on anecdotal evidence, an accumulation of particular extreme cases, sporadic and highly publicized, most of which they learned about through the news rather than from direct experience.
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37 Perceptions of the causes of these problems vary according to the geography of the region and the socioeconomic setting of the different institutions. Opinions in South America center around poverty, social exclusion and child labor, added to the low quality of education and expulsion from the system (masked as “dropping out of school”) as factors that trigger frequent incidents of vandalism, theft and different kinds of physical aggression against the school, among students and toward teachers. Interviewees in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, while recognizing these same factors, tended to stress the destabilizing influence of youth gangs and the drug trade that expose students and teachers to extortion and death threats, often borne out.
38 As for the chief manifestations of violence, teachers focus mostly on the school environment and comment that the most dangerous places and situations are en route from home to school, upon entering or leaving the facility, and the risks of keeping the school open to entry by outside persons. They also worry about students who carry weapons, thus giving greater clout to their intimidations and threats. Many educational systems, lacking specific policies for situations of this kind, simply call the police.
39 Despite directives handed down by the ministries of education in the countries, researchers found widespread unease among teachers, who describe their anxiety as they see the problem growing steadily. Even so, there is no lack of critics who object to certain police-type solutions (such as the use of security cameras in schools), pointing to powerful commercial interests in the security industry.
40 Teachers have no lack of critical self-awareness. They have also heard the outcry against teacher discrimination and violence toward students, and therefore advocate HRE training for all teachers. Shortcomings in infrastructure and hygiene, inadequate control by school authorities over certain areas of the facility (particularly bathrooms) also contribute to a deteriorating school environment where conditions are unappealing and dangerous and are an affront to the dignity of people who use them.
41 These perceptions among teachers reflect the broad range of factors involved and the different perspectives for seeing the problems of coexistence, safety and violence in the schools. Nor can the influence of the press be ignored. In countries where the media energetically exploit extreme cases, they often lapse into sensationalism and melodrama, contributing to simplistic, often biased perceptions among the population and pushing authorities to take fast, harsh action.
42 The report notes that at present the media appear to be “setting the agenda” in this field, with all the risks that implies. First, educational authorities feel pressured into knee-jerk reactions to the most highly publicized cases, launching policies and actions that are not well thought out or have not been consulted. Second, they fail to assert their own well-founded position on problems and make it heard with the same force as the media or other private interests speaking through the media, including the economic concerns of companies that sell security services.
Development of policies: statistical information and situation assessments
43 Only a little over half of the 17 countries studied (53%) report that the ministries of education have statistical information and data bases on incidents or situations of
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violent conflict in the nation’s schools, to varying degrees. Five countries (29%) have this information to an acceptable degree, while the other four (23.5%) have it partially (information is incomplete, disperse or indirect). Having reliable empirical data of national coverage is critical if the countries are to take a serious approach to these problems without succumbing to name-calling or sensationalist perceptions, so often fueled by news stories on the most extreme events.
44 Statistical data can be gathered by the ministry of education itself or by other entities, including the police or the ministry of justice. However, if they are to serve educational needs, such data need to meet certain minimum requirements. The ministry of education should express its view and approve decisions on the design of data collection to incorporate the perspective that educational institutions need; and the data must be easily available for analysis by the ministry as a basis for making decisions. In the absence of these minimum conditions, the mere existence of data offers little or no benefit to the education system.
45 In several countries, the ministry of education compiles data from individual complaints or reports filed on violence in schools; the complaints may be received in writing or over a special telephone hot line. This type of information, while useful, tends to be biased and inadequate. It reflects particular situations, mostly extreme cases, which comprise a very small share of all the events that actually occur, and there are no procedures for verification and collecting evidence.
46 Research found that in eight of 17 countries (47%), the lead institution for education practiced some procedure for processing and analysis of available statistical data. The same five countries that had acceptable amounts of data were also achieving acceptable levels of processing and analysis (29%), while another three (18%) did so only partially. Altogether, this indicator points to results similar to the last one, although with lower levels of achievement. Education authorities possessing information and databases tend to process and analyze their data in some fashion, even if their methods are less than optimal. A few of the countries that conduct nationwide surveys on this subject also compile and process data on victimization and perceptions of violence that are more sophisticated and nuanced.
47 Systematic processing of data entails classifying and disaggregating the information; each country tends to use its own criteria for this purpose, even though specialized organizations recommend that national indicators be based on internationally accepted standards. A move toward using common criteria and categories in processing data would make it possible to draw comparisons across different situations.
48 Positive findings on the availability of descriptive or narrative studies by the ministry of education based on existing data are less widespread than for the previous indicators. There is a steady decline in the degree to which the three indicators on this variable yield a positive result, and the third drops off more abruptly than the first two. This is not surprising because producing analytical studies entails more rigorous and in-depth work than merely collecting and processing statistical data. Only five of the 17 countries (29%) have such studies: three in acceptable quantities (18%) and two partially, as they have fewer studies or studies of lesser scope. Although this indicator produced poor results, it is encouraging that four more countries (23.5%) are currently working on studies of this kind.
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49 Some of the processes for analyzing or sorting data and developing studies are the result of multi-sectorial initiatives rather than an exclusive activity of the ministries of education. These are good examples of synergy among national institutions or with international organizations, combining efforts, expertise and resources.
Policies, plans and programs
50 The technical concepts guidelines, plans, programs and projects are not used consistently among countries, and the distinction between one category and the next is often blurred. The concepts should be used cautiously and understood as approximations, not absolutes, as the terminology can vary from one place to another.
51 Thirteen of 17 countries (76.5%) already have some type of ministry guidelines or instructions on peaceful coexistence and violence prevention in schools. Of these, eight countries (47%) have developed them to an acceptable degree, and five countries (29%), to a partial degree. The indicator found a high degree of compliance because this very broad category of public policies includes provisions contained in separate and distinct regulatory instruments (general law of education, children’s code, disciplinary rules, orders by different ministries or circulars by education authorities). The category could also apply for rules of a general nature, perhaps not specifically targeting the problems covered by this study, but including them under a particular article or paragraph, albeit briefly or schematically.
52 The indicator on the existence of specific plans in this field points to significantly lower levels of compliance, indeed the lowest of the entire variable. Of the 17 countries, only seven (41%) have some kind of plan on this subject, one (6%) to an acceptable degree and six (35%), only partially.
53 By contrast, specific programs and projects on peaceful coexistence, safety and violence prevention in schools are present to some degree in the great majority of countries from which information was obtained (94%). Of the 17 countries, 10 (59%) received acceptable scores, while six (35%) are partially acceptable.
54 If the public policies are placed on a continuum between the extremes of “generality/ specificity”, the overall tendency is for the majority of the countries fall into two clear categories: the most common are operational, specific policies with limited coverage (programs and projects in the schools), followed by the exact opposite, with policies as general as possible (guidelines or instructions from the ministry). The types of policy found most infrequently were intermediate: comprehensive but also specific, referring directly and explicitly to issues of peaceful coexistence, safety and violence prevention in schools (specific plans). The macro level and micro levels are equally important and useful, but there is still a need for more in-depth, comprehensive educational proposals that cover vast geographic areas, that are organic, developed via participatory processes and based on inter-sectorial commitments. This is easier when public policy instruments are in place, such as national plans.
55 In conclusion, the region is moving ahead quickly, but remains visibly ambivalent. A very positive sign is that since the second half of the last decade, the States have been adopting initiatives for intervention in primary and secondary schools to build peaceful coexistence deliberately and systematically and tackle possible situations of violence; but it is not encouraging to find so few examples of the fullest, most comprehensive level of planning: national plans that are attuned to the needs and specificities of each
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State. The presence of so few plans to address these matters suggests that many difficulties still stand in the way of developing authentic policies of national scope that are systematic, comprehensive and all-encompassing.
56 Many of the existing plans, programs and projects were inspired by or developed in cooperation with civil society organizations or international organizations. In some cases, it was even reported that the initiative had originated when these entities approached the State to exert pressure and work with it on this problem.
57 Researchers identified education policies on peaceful coexistence, safety and prevention of violence in the schools that explicitly and clearly incorporate the values and principles of human rights education. Of the 17 countries, 13 (76.5%) reflect these values and principles extensively, while three (18%) do so partially. Together they make up 94.5% of the universe of study. This means they were conceived with a rights perspective instilled by international agreements the States have signed, especially the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
58 The presence of a rights perspective in these policies goes beyond merely citing international instruments as a standard; it means that human rights are present in other ways as well. For example, they could underpin activities for organizing program and project work with other members of the education community, or serve as course content in program and project training opportunities for members of the education community.
Policy implementation
59 In answer to the question of whether the ministry of education has a department(s) formally responsible for addressing this problem, the indicator was met to some degree in 14 of the 17 countries studied (82%): it was acceptable in five (29%) and partial in the other nine (53%). Partial compliance means that researchers failed to identify a specific entity within the ministry of education that was clearly responsible for the issue, but instead, several different departments (sometimes pertaining to different ministries) had some share of responsibility, although not clearly delimited, and all were acting separately. This reflects an institutional response in principle, although the dispersion of objectives and the assignment to a variety of State agencies, with no joint coordinated action, does not guarantee an effective response to these serious problems.
60 The indicator that produced the fewest results was the existence of a budget for implementing plans, programs and projects on peaceful coexistence, safety and prevention of violence in the schools. Only six of the 17 countries (35%) were found to have some type of official budget resources. Three (18%) satisfied the indicator partially. Two countries (12%) reported no budget, while researchers in nine countries, the majority of the universe of study (53%), found no information in some cases, or insufficient information to judge the current budget situation.
61 The fact that the budget is partial or non-existent does not mean that current policies are not being implemented at all. There is evidence that they are taking place to some degree, but it is not clear how much or how their daily operations are funded (resources may come from other budget items or programs, or from projects with international organizations or private businesses). In any case, this indicator points out a weakness found in many good proposals. Without a stable official budget, it is practically impossible to carry out on-going specialized actions with good coverage
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that require professional support to enhance the work of regular teachers (social workers, counselors, psychologists and in certain cases for prevention of serious violence or crimes, police officers).
62 The picture for the region is more promising in terms of the participation of different stakeholders in education, as three-fourths of the countries in the study have policies on the subject whose text explicitly calls for a variety of stakeholders to take part in implementation, in addition to the country’s lead agency for education. Ten countries (59%) do so consistently, repeatedly and on a sound footing; in another three countries (18%), the point is raised timidly, occasionally or irregularly. If the main educational actors are given active participation and decision-making authority, they not only exercise their right to participate in matters that affect them, but also will ownership of the policies and commit to them, which helps bring about better results.
63 Official documents are not always enough for a good evaluation of policy implementation. Often the texts do not differentiate among the many participants in education (they speak of the “education community” without specifying who it is), or they fail to define everyone’s duties and competencies, that is, whether they are empowered to deliberate and propose policies, and above all, to make decisions about them. If such details are not specified clearly, the participation asserted in such policy documents may end up being more token than real.
64 The ministry of education produces and distributes rights-based materials for training and public education on the problems under study. Three-fourths of the countries give positive results, six of which were acceptable in quantitative terms (35%) and another seven, partially acceptable or limited (41%). Most common are print versions of the policy documents themselves, as well as study materials for teachers, students and families (brochures, guides and handbooks), festivals and public-awareness drives. Unfortunately, there is little information on how these materials are distributed among members of the educational community and to what extent, so it is impossible to say whether they reach the entire country on an equal footing.
65 The ministries of education emphasize that regulatory documents and public-education materials are posted on their websites, but in reality, the Internet is not a medium that the main stakeholders in education use habitually to find out about public policies. If it is not enhanced with other sources of information, its impact is not only low, but also difficult to estimate.
66 Of all the indicators for this variable, the most successful is whether training activities on this subject are offered to the different participants in education. Fifteen of the 17 countries (88%) reported different types of training activities for principals, teachers, students and families, 10 to an acceptable degree (59%) and five, only partially (29%).
67 The activities generally consist of lectures and workshops for different audiences and on different topics, in two main categories. The first category is training for school principals and teachers on the content and implementation of public policies. It covers such topics as human rights education, how to perform situation assessments on peaceful coexistence and violence in the school, legal and psychological guidance, strategies for conflict resolution, support for the participatory development of school codes or regulations on peaceful coexistence (in countries that have them) evaluation of policies in that respect, and the like. The other category, training for the broader educational community, raises awareness about problems with coexistence, developing social relationships and preventing violence. The training covers such topics as self-
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esteem and communication, life skills, ethics and values, citizenship and human rights, crime prevention, alerts on new types of crime, especially using the Internet, addiction prevention, gender equality, sexuality and HIV-AIDS prevention, culture, recreation and sports, etc.
68 The countries very often create forms of cooperation between the country’s lead entity of education and other entities to multiply the impact of training and awareness rising. Examples may include other government departments (local governments, the ombudsman, child welfare, other ministries such as social development, health, security, internal affairs or justice, the board of elections, the local police, etc.), local or international nongovernmental organizations (such as Plan International) and inter- governmental organizations (UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO, UNFPA, IIHR, OEI, and the like).
69 Inter-institutional activities can be very effective and productive if they are planned jointly and carried out in close coordination; this is not always the case in the countries examined, despite the best of intentions. Effective inter-sectorial cooperation is recognized as a valuable but challenging goal. Because efforts were found to be disjointed in so many cases, with similar but unconnected interventions being made repeatedly, the need is more pressing than ever to develop national plans for preventing violence in schools and in overall society.
Policy monitoring and evaluation
70 As a whole, this variable yielded the fewest positive results by comparison with the others. Such a finding can be explained in part because the concern with developing specific policies on these issues is relatively recent.
71 The best results are on policy monitoring to determine whether policies are reviewed and are progressing as expected. A total of 11 countries (65%) apply some strategy for monitoring or follow-up on these policies; two do so regularly and thoroughly (12%) and the other nine do so irregularly, inconsistently or partially (53%). Other countries are in the process of developing or implementing monitoring mechanisms (12%).
72 The findings drop off abruptly on evaluation of the results of current plans, programs and projects. Only five of the 17 countries studied (30%) have some type of evaluation mechanism. Two countries have set up acceptable, regular evaluations (12%), and three evaluate partially or sporadically (18%). Another three countries (18%) are currently developing or about to develop some evaluation mechanism, while in eight countries, nearly half the universe of study (47%), none was identified.
73 The figures obtained on availability of evaluation findings and conclusions are even more meager. Five countries (30%) have either quantitative or qualitative findings and conclusions, two to an acceptable degree (12%) and three, partially (18%). No country was in the process of developing them. The majority, eleven of the 17 countries (65%), has none. The two countries that performed best on the latter two indicators (Mexico and Argentina) have developed information systems that collect quantitative and qualitative data to support every stage of the policy process, from context assessments to final evaluation of results and impact.
74 The fact that a plan or project is relatively recent is not an excuse for not evaluating and is insufficient reason for official results on its operations to be unavailable, even if they are only partial or provisional. Specialists and academic institutions will always
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make valuable contributions to research and evaluation, but they cannot and should not relieve the public system of discharging its responsibility. Without strategies for monitoring and evaluation, any public education policy walks blind, especially in a complex, multi-faceted, constantly changing problem area such as the one discussed.
Recommendations
75 It is not the task of a regional research report to advocate actual content for policies to create healthy coexistence in schools, guarantee safe school environments and prevent outbreaks of violence that threaten the educational community. Such policies call for tailor-made approaches attuned to the circumstances, needs and concerns of each particular national — or even local — setting. Authorities in charge of education in each country should lead the process of building them.
76 The only overall recommendation that can be drawn from the report is that, if the country has no policies in this regard or if existing policies are incomplete or fragmented, the State should undertake to introduce them based on a well-founded assessment and proposals produced from within the educational system itself, guided by authorities but involving all relevant sectors.
77 In fact this process has already begun and is moving ahead quickly in the region. However, since the goal of this research was to conduct systematic observation of HRE progress, drawing on its findings some general suggestions can be offered to the States Parties of the Protocol of San Salvador for developing, implementing and evaluating such policies. Among them, national education authorities are advised:
78 To investigate systematically the situations that might affect peaceful coexistence and safety in the country’s schools, as well as the perceptions held by members of the education community on the subject and the role played by mass media in creating them. To use clear rules for classifying information, and indicators based on internationally accepted standards in order to move toward common rules and categories for processing data. To foster studies based on sound data. To promote the design of specific national plans that are comprehensive, have the broadest geographic coverage, are developed in participatory fashion and are grounded in an inter-sectorial commitments to work together. To adopt a genuine human rights approach in all policies on the subject, not merely making reference to international instruments, but incorporating them as a blueprint to organize work with the education community as part of intervention programs and projects in schools. To guarantee that each school and the many different players in its educational community enjoy real, active participation and have decision-making power in developing, implementing and evaluating policies on the subject. To ensure that there is at least one unit within the ministry of education responsible for handling this problem and for applying current policies, and to endow it with sufficient resources to carry out regular actions of nationwide coverage. To regularly evaluate existing policies and the actions for school intervention derived therefrom, and see that their findings are discussed with the education community, and made available to the public. To identify and study best practices performed in this field in other countries of the region and the world, and to learn from them. 1The Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, IIHR/IIDH, located in San Jose, Costa Rica produces the annual Inter-American Report on Human Rights Education. This author has been a
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member of the research team since the design stage in 2000, and currently coordinates it. She was the writer of the X Report here discussed. 2The 19 countries signatory of the Protocol of San Salvador are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. In the case of the X Report, unfortunately, no researchers could take part from either Haiti or Suriname, so no information is available on these two countries. The research universe was then limited to 17 countries. 3Together with “learning to be, ” “learning to do” and “learning to learn, ” these are the four pillars of education defined by Delors Report and now universally accepted. See UNESCO(1996).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abad, J. M., and J. A. Gómez (2008), ¡Preparados, Listos, Ya! Una Síntesis de Invervenciones Efectivas para la Prevención de Violencia que Afecta a Adolescentes y Jóvenes, Lima, OPS-GTZ.
Abramovay, Miriam (coord.) (2009), Revelando Tramas, Descobrindo Segredos. Violência e Conivência nas Escolas, Brasilia, RITLA- SEE/GDT.
Acosta, Felicitas (2008), Escuela Media y Sectores Populares. Posibilidades y Potencia de la Escuela Moderna, Buenos Aires, Editorial La Crujía.
Gomes, Candido Alberto (2008), “Abriendo espacios: puentes entre escuela, comunidad y vida”, paper given at “Abrindo espaços: múltiplos olhares”, Brasilia, DF, UNESCO, Fundação Vale.
IIHR — Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (2011), X Inter-American Report on Human Rights Education. Development of Policies for Safety and Peaceful Coexistence in the Schools with a Focus on Rights, San Jose, IIHR, available at: http://iidh-webserver.iidh.ed.cr/multic/UserFiles/Biblioteca/ IIDH/6_2012/5a79af86-c209-48d2-8dc7-02b323dd2324.pdf
Krauskopf, Dina (2006), Estado del Arte de los Programas de Prevención de la Violencia en Ámbitos Escolares, Lima, OPS-GTZ, available at: http://www.paho.org/spanish/ad/fch/ca/ arte.violencia.pdf
MEN, MEPC, and OEI (2005), Actuar a Tiempo. Estrategias Educativas para Prevenir la Violencia, Buenos Aires, Ministerio de Educación de la Nación, Ministerio de Educación de la Provincia de Córdoba, and Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos.
OAS — Organization of American States (1988), Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or Protocol of San Salvador, available at: http://www.oas.org/juridico/english/treaties/a-52.html
Rodríguez, Ernesto (2010), “Jóvenes y violencias en las escuelas medias: aprendizajes y desafíos desde las políticas públicas en América Latina”, in the seminar “Learning to live without violence: a challenge for young people and their schools”, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Under- secretary of Public Education and UNESCO, Mexico City, June, 2010.
UN — United Nations (1989), Convention on the Rights of the Child, General Assembly resolution 44/25, 11/20/89, available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf
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UNDP — United Nations Development Programme (2007), Marco Conceptual del Segundo Informe sobre Desarrollo Humano, San Jose, UNDP.
UNESCO (1996), Learning. The Treasure Within, report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, led by Jacque Delors, available at: http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdf
NOTES
1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3.
ABSTRACTS
The paper presents the theoretical framework, methodology and results of the X Inter-American Report on Human Rights Education, produced in 2011 by the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights (Costa Rica) under the coordination of the author. The research examines the increasing problem of securing peaceful coexistence, safety and prevention of school violence in 17 Latin American countries from South, Central and North America, and the educational policies they have developed or are currently developing to face it, analyzed from a human rights perspective.
O trabalho apresenta o quadro teórico, a metodologia e os resultados do X Informe Interamericano da Educação em Direitos Humanos, produzido em 2011 pelo Instituto Interamericano de Direitos Humanos (Costa Rica) sob a coordenação da autora. A investigação examina o crescente problema de assegurar a convivência pacífica e a segurança e prevenir a violência escolar em 17 países latino-americanos da América do Sul, Central e do Norte, e as políticas educativas que se têm elaborado ou estão a elaborar atualmente para enfrentá-la, analisadas numa perspetiva de direitos humanos.
Le travail présente le cadre théorique, la méthodologie et les résultats du Xe Rapport Interaméricain de l’Éducation aux Droits de l’Homme, produit en 2011 par l’Institut Interaméricain des Droits de l’Homme (Costa Rica) sous la coordination de l’auteure. La recherche aborde la difficulté croissante à assurer la coexistence pacifique et la sécurité et à prévenir la violence à l’école dans 17 pays d’Amérique du Sud, Centrale et du Nord, en mettant l’accent sur les politiques éducatives qui ont été mises en œuvre ou qui sont en cours d’élaboration afin de la combattre, analysées du point de vue des droits de l’homme.
El trabajo presenta el marco teórico, la metodología y los resultados del X Informe Interamericano de la Educación en Derechos Humanos, producido en 2011 por el Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos (Costa Rica) bajo la coordinación de la autora. La investigación examina el creciente problema de asegurar la convivencia pacífica, la seguridad y prevenir la violencia escolar en 17 países latinoamericanos de América del Sur, Central y del Norte, y las políticas educativas que se han elaborado o se están elaborando actualmente para enfrentarlo, analizadas desde una perspectiva de derechos humanos.
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INDEX
Mots-clés: sécurité à l’école, coexistence scolaire, prévention de la violence à l’école, droits de l’homme en matière d’éducation Palavras-chave: segurança escolar, convivência escolar, prevenção de violência escolar, direitos humanos em educação Palabras claves: seguridad escolar, convivencia escolar, prevención de violencia escolar, derechos humanos en educación Keywords: school safety, school peaceful coexistence, prevention of school violence, Human Rights in education
AUTHOR
ANA MARÍA RODINO
Senior researcher at the Costa Rica Distance University and Main Educational Consultant for the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. E-mail: [email protected]
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School bullying Bullying escolar Le harcèlement à l’école Bullying escolar
Peter K. Smith
1 There is some consensus that bullying is aggressive behaviour which intentionally hurts or harms another person; together with repetition — it happens more than once; and a power imbalance such that it is difficult for the victim to defend him- or herself (Olweus, 1999). A succinct definition is the ‘systematic abuse of power’ (Smith & Sharp, 1994). It can occur in many contexts, in childhood and adult life (Monks et al., 2009). However, the earliest sustained work, and the largest volume of work, has concerned school bullying. Bullying can be carried out by a group, or by one stronger individual; although usually considered in the context of pupil-pupil relationships, both teacher- pupil and pupil-teacher bullying may occur. Besides physical bullying — the larger child hitting and beating up a smaller one — and verbal bullying — nasty forms of teasing and verbal abuse — there can be indirect and relational bullying. Indirect bullying refers to some kind of social manipulation using others as a means of attack instead of attacking oneself, or otherwise manipulating the social network of the class; and relational bullying to inflicting harm on peers in ways that damage peer relationships; these overlapping concepts cover spreading nasty rumours, and social exclusion. More recently cyberbullying has emerged as a major topic.
2 Research on school bullying can be thought of as having gone through four waves (Smith, 2012).
First wave: origins 1970s — 1988
3 The systematic study of bullying in schools can be dated from the 1970s, mainly in Scandinavia. In 1973 Olweus published Forskning om skolmobbning, translated into English in 1978 Aggression in Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys. Here, bullying or “mobbing” was defined in terms of physical and verbal behaviours, although Olweus explicitly rejected the “mobbing” label (which implies group bullying), since much
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bullying appeared to be by one person. Through the 1980s, Olweus developed a self- report questionnaire to assess bullying, an important tool in subsequent work. Also, in parallel with the first Norwegian National Anti-Bullying campaign in 1983, he developed a school-based intervention program. His evaluation of the original version of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (1983-1985), with reports of reductions in bullying of around 50%, encouraged researchers and inspired the next wave of research.
Second wave: establishing a research program 1989 — mid-1990s
4 From around 1989, books and journal articles started to appear; and surveys in other countries beyond Scandinavia were beginning to be carried out. Besides self-report surveys, some studies started to use peer nominations methodology. Also, some intervention campaigns took place in other countries, partly inspired by the Norwegian campaign.
5 An important change in this period was a broadening of researcher’s definition of bullying, to include indirect and relational bullying (such as rumour spreading, social exclusion); this followed the similar broadening of understanding of “aggression”, following the work of Bjorkqvist and colleagues in Finland, and Crick and colleagues in the USA. Also, work on bullying was becoming more international. Contacts were taking place with researchers in North America, and towards the end of this period, with researchers in Japan. In fact, studies on ijime (the term closest to bullying) dated back at least to the 1980s, but this separate research tradition only made substantial contact with the western research tradition following a Monbusho/UNESCO study in the later 1990s (see Smith et al., 1999).
Third wave: an established international research program mid-1990s — 2004
6 During this period, research on “traditional” bullying became an important international research program. Many more publications appeared, and research on bullying featured substantially in European and international conferences. Surveys, and interventions, took place in many countries (see 21 country reports in Smith et al., 1999; and 11 country reports on interventions in Smith, Pepler and Rigby, 2004). A notable methodological step was the introduction of participant roles in bullying, from Salmivalli’s work in Finland (Salmivalli et al., 1996). Researchers in the USA substantially developed research on victimization and bullying during this period (Espelage & Swearer, 2004), and important work was also being undertaken in Australia and New Zealand (Rigby, 2002).
Fourth wave: cyberbullying 2004-
7 Over the last decade, cyberbullying has become a significant aspect to be taken account of (Tokunaga, 2010; Smith, 2012). This started off as text message and email bullying, which increased through the mid-2000s (Rivers & Noret, 2010); but since then the
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development of smart phones, and greatly increased use social networking sites, have offered many new tools for those wishing to hurt others. Broadly speaking, cyberbullying now takes up an appreciable fraction of total bullying in young people (around one-third). However work on “traditional” or offline bullying has continued to develop (Jimerson, Swearer & Espelage, 2010).
Cyberbullying
8 Compared to traditional bullying, cyberbullying is much more likely to be perpetrated and experienced outside of school; but is still often between class- or school-mates. Cyberbullying differs from traditional bullying in a variety of ways. Smith (2012) described seven features: (1) it depends on some degree of technological expertise; (2) it is primarily indirect rather than face-to-face, and thus may be anonymous; (3) relatedly, the perpetrator does not usually see the victim’s reaction, at least in the short term; (4) the variety of bystander roles in cyberbullying is more complex than in most traditional bullying (the bystander may be with the perpetrator when an act is sent or posted; with the victim when it is received; or with neither, when receiving the message or visiting the relevant Internet site); (5) one motive for traditional bullying is thought to be the status gained by showing (abusive) power over others, in front of witnesses, but the perpetrator will often lack this in cyberbullying; (6) the breadth of the potential audience is increased, as cyberbullying can reach particularly large audiences in a peer group compared with the small groups that are the usual audience in traditional bullying; (7) it is difficult to escape from cyberbullying (there is “no safe haven”), as the victim may be sent messages to their mobile or computer, or access nasty website comments, wherever they are.
9 By extending the definition from traditional bullying, cyberbullying has been defined as “an aggressive act or behaviour that is carried out using electronic means by a group or an individual repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (Smith et al., 2008). However the criteria of repetition, and power imbalance, while relatively clear for traditional bullying, have more difficulties in application to cyberbullying.
10 First, the idea of repetition within cyberbullying is not as straightforward; one cyberbullying act may readily “snowball” out of the initial control of the bully, due to the technology used. An example is a picture that is sent (or uploaded onto the Internet), that at a later stage is distributed by other people (not the initial perpetrator). Thus a single act by one perpetrator may be repeated many times by others, and experienced many times by the victim. If the repetition is not carried out by the perpetrator, is this still cyberbullying?
11 The second definitional issue is that of power imbalance. In traditional bullying this might refer to physical or psychological weakness, or it might refer to numbers of aggressors, or popularity/rejection in a peer group context. Such forms of power imbalance within the cyberbullying context are not so clear. Vandebosch and Van Cleemput (2008) argued that a greater knowledge of ICT’s may contribute to a power imbalance; they found that pupils with more advanced Internet skills were more likely to have experience with deviant Internet and mobile phone activities. Ybarra and Mitchell (2004) found that cyberbullies do rate themselves as Internet experts to a higher degree compared to those who do not cyberbully others. However, in much of
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the text message and website bullying experienced by pupils of school age, technological skill is arguably a minor factor. Vandebosch and Van Cleemput (2008) also argued that anonymity can contribute to a power imbalance. Often the victim does not know who the person bullying him/her is. It is more difficult to respond effectively if you do not know the identity of the perpetrator. Conversely, if a victim does know the perpetrator, then the more conventional criteria of physical/psychological strength and peer group popularity may come back into play (i.e., a victim may be fearful of retaliating against a popular and stronger pupil who may take further revenge offline).
12 In summary, defining cyberbullying may not be as clear cut as defining traditional bullying, due to difficulties in the criteria of repetition and power imbalance. These issues, and the extent to which cyberbullying can usefully be distinguished from a broader concept of cyber aggression or cyber victimization, are being debated.
Bias or identity-based bullying
13 The terms bias bullying, identity-based bullying or prejudice driven bullying refer to bullying on the basis of group rather than individual characteristics, and include racial harassment, faith-based bullying, sexual harassment, and homophobic bullying. Racist bullying is a worrying feature in some schools, although the extent varies between cultures (Sawyer, Bradshaw & O’Brennan, 2008). There has been considerable research on homophobic bullying (Rivers, 2011). In secondary schools, children may be teased about their sexual orientation, and even physically assaulted or ridiculed about this by other pupils or teachers. In Great Britain, a Stonewall report (Stonewall, 2007) found that 65% of lesbian/gay/bisexual (LGB) students reported homophobic victimisation; this was most frequent from boys in the same year group c. 80% of cases) but not infrequently from girls (c. 50%). Explicit school rules regarding the issue was associated with lower incidence. In the US, Birkett, Espelage, and Koenig (2009) found that positive school climate can lessen negative outcomes for LGB students.
14 Another risk factor is having a disability or special educational needs. Children with special needs are two to three times more at risk of being bullied; they are also more at risk of taking part in bullying others (Mishna, 2003). They may have particular characteristics which make them an obvious “target”; in mainstream settings are less well integrated socially and lack the protection against bullying which friendship gives; and, those with behavioural problems may act out in an aggressive way and become “provocative victims”. Adolescents with autism spectrum disorders have been found to be at higher victimisation risk, especially when they misinterpret social situations (Roekel, Scholte & Didden, 2009).
Measurement of bullying
15 Large-scale surveys have used questionnaires. The Olweus anonymous self-report questionnaire is the most widely used internationally; it incorporates a standard definition of bullying (Solberg & Olweus, 2003). Questionnaires have obvious advantages in terms of getting information from many informants, quickly and easily. Another well-used methodology is nominations; here, an informant is asked to nominate self or others (e.g. classmates) for involvement in roles such as bully, or
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victim. A development of this technique allows differentiation of participant roles such as ringleader bully, follower, reinforcer, outsider and defender, as well as victim (Salmivalli et al., 1996); and more recently, asking for who is involved in dyadic relationships in all the main participant roles (Huitsing & Veenstra, 2012).
16 Many other methods can provide useful information. These include nominations; interviews and focus groups; diaries, blogs, and drawings; and observations. The informant is often the pupil him- or herself; or a peer — usually someone in the same class, or year group, at school. Self-reports by pupils have been widely used in questionnaires, and pupil reports in peer nomination procedures. The informant can also be an adult at school — usually the class teacher, or perhaps a pastoral care teacher, school nurse or counsellor; and a family member — usually a parent or carer, or perhaps a sibling or other relative. Adult (teacher and parent) reports might have limited value for pupil-pupil bullying, as adults are often only aware of a fraction of what is going on in the peer group.
Prevalence of bullying
17 The actual prevalence figures reported in surveys vary very greatly. Considering questionnaire surveys, prevalence rates will be influenced by: what time span is being asked about (e.g. last month, last term, last year, ever at school); what frequency is regarded as bullying (e.g. once/twice a term; once a month, once a week or more); what definition is used (e.g. whether it includes indirect as well as direct forms, and cyberbullying). All these issues make it often difficult to compare across studies; it also means that absolute incidence figures are rather meaningless, in isolation.
18 Cook et al. (2010) examined quantitative studies of school bullying published from 1999 to 2006. A search revealed 82 studies that met criteria for a meta-analysis. Of these, 45 were in Europe, 21 in the United States, and 16 in other locations. The majority, 61 studies, used self-report data, 13 peer report, and 8 teacher or parent report. The authors calculated average prevalence rates of around 20% for bullies, 23% for victims, and 8% for bully/victims. There was a high variability in figures across studies, but overall these are quite high figures; this is probably because bullying that only happened “once or twice” in a time referent period was included in a number of studies. Peer nomination methods produced lower bully and victim rates than either self or teacher/parent report (but no difference for bully/victim rates).
19 Two large-scale sources of prevalence data, gathered systematically across countries, come from the World Health Organisation surveys on Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC); and the EU Kids Online project.
20 The HBSC surveys collect data from 11-, 13- and 15- years olds from nationally representative samples, every four years, starting in 1993/1994; there is a minimum of 1, 500 respondents per year group, in each participating country. These are classroom- based, anonymous self-report questionnaire surveys. The reports on bullying are based on a single victim item and a single bully item, adapted from the Olweus questionnaire, which asks about experiences over the past couple of months, with five response options. Victim or bully rates were calculated from, “at least two or three times in the past couple of months” or more (so, ignoring “it only happened once or twice”).
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21 Craig et al. (2009) provide findings from the 2005/2006 survey. This data set is from 40 countries, mostly European, but also including the United States, Canada, Russian Federation, and Ukraine. The rates for bullying others average out at 10.7%, and for being bullied (victims) at 12.6%, with 3.6% scoring as bully/victims. Currie et al. (2012) provide data from the 2009/2010 HBSC survey. This data set is from 38 countries, again mostly European, but also including the United States, Canada, Russian Federation, Armenia and Ukraine. The rates for bullying others average out at 10.3%, and for being bullied (victims) at 11.3% (there was no separate category for bully/victims). It can be seen that there is a slight decrease in figures between the two surveys. It is also noticeable that these figures are less than half the level from the Cook et al. (2010) review.
22 Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig and Ólafsson (2011) report findings on traditional bullying and cyberbullying from 25 European countries, from the EU Kids Online survey on Internet use, risks and safety, carried out in spring/summer 2010. The samples were based on random stratified sampling of some 1000 children, aged 9 to 16 years, in each country, with a total sample of 25,142. Self-report survey questionnaires were given face-to-face. A section on bullying explained that this could be face-to-face; or by mobile phone calls or texts; or on the Internet. Then the child or young person was asked whether someone had acted in this hurtful or nasty way to them in the past 12 months, for these three types of activities. Following that, they were asked if they themselves had acted in a hurtful or nasty way to others in the last year. Responses were scored as more than once a week, once or twice a month, less often than that, or never.
23 Across the European countries, 19% of 9-16 year olds said that something nasty had happened to them in the past 12 months. However only 5% said this had happened more than once a week, and another 4% once or twice a month, with 10% responding that it was less often. Victim rates were slightly higher in girls, and increased slightly with age. Face-to-face or offline bullying experiences were most frequent at 13%, on the Internet by 6% (this was mostly on a social networking site or by instant messaging), and by mobile phone by 3%.
24 Perpetrator or bullying rates averaged 12% across the whole sample. Only 2% said this had happened more than once a week, and another 3% once or twice a month, with 7% responding that it was less often. There was little gender difference (boys slightly higher at 3% in the more than once a week category), and bully rates increased somewhat with age. Face-to-face or offline bullying of others was most frequent at 10%, on the Internet by 3% (this was mostly on a social networking site or by instant messaging), and by mobile phone by 2%.
25 If one disregards experiences that were less frequent than once or twice a month, then bully prevalence is 5% and victim prevalence is 9%. This is lower than the HBSC findings with a corresponding frequency cutoff, and much lower than the figures from the Cook et al. meta-analysis. The HBSC figures are about 10% and 11% respectively, so the main discrepancy is the lower prevalence of bullying others in the EU Kids Online findings. This is unexplained, although one possible explanation could be a greater unwillingness to admit to bullying others in a face-to-face interview compared to an anonymous class-based questionnaire.
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Changes in prevalence rates over time
26 The two HBSC surveys above show some decrease in bully and victim prevalence rates over time. This appears to be a general trend. Rigby and Smith (2011) reported on various sources of data over the period 1990 to 2009, and concluded that a modest but significant decrease in bullying has been reported in many countries. However, there are some indications that cyber bullying, as opposed to traditional bullying, has increased, at least during some of this period.
Age and gender trends in bullying
27 Questionnaire surveys generally show that self-reports of being bullied decline rather steadily through adolescence; self-reports of bullying others do not show this decline (Smith, Madsen & Moody, 1999). There tends to be some shift with age away from physical bullying and toward indirect and relational bullying. Cyberbullying has a somewhat later age peak, at mid-adolescence, than is found for traditional bullying (Eslea & Rees, 2001; Tokunaga, 2010).
28 In traditional bullying, boys are more numerous in the bully category, but the sexes are more equal in the victim category. Boys practice/experience more physical bullying, girls more indirect and relational bullying. Girls’ bullying (compared to boys’) is more bound up with friendships, feuds and exclusion (Besag, 2006). In cyberbullying, gender differences vary considerably between studies, but relatively, girls may be more involved in cyberbullying and victimisation.
Risk factors in victimisation
29 Some risk factors are at the individual level, including genetic factors. In England and Wales the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Study of over 1000 twin pairs (Ball et al., 2008) found strong genetic influence on children’s victimisation status at 9-10 years (MZ [identical] twins had more similar victimisation experiences than DZ twins), and also on bullying behaviour. These genetic factors may operate through various mechanisms including personality disposition, emotion regulation, or social cognition, many identified as individual risk factors in bullying (Farrington & Baldry, 2010). For example boys who bully have been found to have low affective empathy (sharing others’ emotions), although not low cognitive empathy (understanding others emotions) (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2011). In secondary school pupils, moral disengagement, together with expectations of positive outcomes from harmful behaviour, have been found to facilitate both traditional and cyber aggression to peers (Pornari & Wood, 2009). Although some bullying children may lack social skills, ringleader bullies especially may have good “theory of mind” abilities (understanding of others’ mental states) and be skilled social manipulators (Sutton, Smith & Swettenham, 1999).
30 In terms of the school peer group, risk factors comprise having few friends, especially friends who can be trusted or who are not themselves of low status; and sociometric rejection (dislike by peers). One hypothesis is that some children who bully are driven by a desire for dominant status in the peer group (Salmivalli, 2010). This highlights the
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importance of bystanders, with evidence that children with both high empathy and high peer group status, can be the most effective defenders (Nickerson, Mele & Princiotta, 2008; Caravita, DiBlasio & Salmivalli, 2009). In-group attitudes within the class or peer group may be influential (Nesdale et al., 2008), and can lead to ostracism of those perceived as different (Dixon, 2007), but there is little evidence for the scapegoating theory (since many classes have no victims, and many have several) (Mahdavi & Smith, 2007).
31 In terms of family background factors, there is some evidence that victims may come from over-protective or enmeshed families. Children who bully others may come from families lacking warmth, in which violence is common, and discipline inconsistent. Children who are both bullies and victims, or are aggressive victims, may come from particularly troubled or abusive families (Nickerson, Mele & Osborne-Oliver, 2010).
32 The E-Risk study found that school factors were mainly associated with victim risk, family factors with bully risk, and neighbourhood factors with risk of bully/victim status (Bowes et al., 2009); and that maternal and sibling warmth and positive home atmosphere contribute to resilience in coping with victimisation (this twin study demonstrating that this is an environmental, not genetic, effect) (Bowes et al., 2010). School factors may operate through school climate, school policies and anti-bullying strategies; with some research highlighting the role of pupil relationships with teachers (Troop-Gordon & Quenelle, 2010).
Consequences of involvement in bullying
33 A meta-analysis of 11 studies found that between 7 and 16 years, bullies, bully-victims, and victims, all had significantly higher risk of psychosomatic problems compared to uninvolved peers (Gini & Pozzoli, 2009). Another meta-analysis (Ttofi et al., 2011) found that victimization was a significant risk factor for later depression, even after controlling for up to 20 other risk factors. Rothon et al. (2011) found a significant association of victimisation with poorer academic achievement. A narrative review confirms that being the victim of bullying contributes independently to children’s mental health problems, and can have long-lasting effects (Arseneault, Bowes & Shakoor, 2010). A longitudinal analysis of in England found that being a victim of chronic or severe bullying at 8 or 10 years was associated with substantially greater odds of psychotic symptoms at age 12, even controlling for other prior psychopathology, family adversity, and child’s IQ (Schreier et al., 2009). Suicidal outcomes can be the most tragic outcome (Kim & Leventhal, 2008).
34 A number of studies show links between persistent bullying at school, and later antisocial behaviour and criminal offending (Farrington, Ttofi, & Lösel, 2011).
Individual coping strategies
35 Pupils adopt a variety of coping strategies when bullied. A substantial proportion of self-reported victims say that they have not told a teacher, or someone at home, about the bullying. A consistent finding is that rates of telling a teacher are less in older pupils, and boys (Hunter & Boyle, 2004). A study of 406 pupils aged 13-16 years found the five most frequent coping strategies were talk to someone, ignore it, stick up for
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yourself, avoid/stay away from bullies, and make more/different friends (Smith et al., 2004). Over a two year period, those who had stopped being victims more often had talked to someone about it (67%) than those who had stayed victims (46%) or become victims (41%). Telling teachers can be successful, but clearly needs a consistent and effective response from teaching staff. Telling adults, especially teachers, is particularly low for victims of cyber-bullying.
School-based intervention/prevention
36 Actions to reduce bullying in schools can be divided into these into broadly proactive strategies in the school and playground, designed to make bullying less likely to happen; peer support (which is both proactive and reactive); and reactive strategies, as ways of dealing with bullying incidents once they have occurred (Thompson & Smith, 2012).
37 Proactive strategies include having a whole school policy on bullying, effective playground supervision, and curriculum work in the classroom. These are well developed for traditional bullying, and resources are being developed tailored for cyberbullying. A European resource, CyberTraining — A Research-based European Training Manual on Cyberbullying, is available at http://www.cybertraining-project.org.
38 In peer support systems, selected students are trained to be peer supporters, to deal with interpersonal conflicts, social exclusion and bullying in proactive and non-violent ways. In primary schools, buddies and befrienders generally look out for pupils at breaktimes, who are upset or lonely. Playleaders or playground pals lead structured games activities. In the secondary sector, peer supporters, usually from older year groups, can be used to support younger students at transition and can also provide one to one mentoring/counselling for bullied students in a designated room. Crucial issues include the selection and training of peer supporters; the gender balance in recruitment (there are often more girl than boy volunteers, particularly in the secondary sector); adequate and continuing supervision by an accessible member of staff; effective promotion of the scheme; and sufficient take-up that peer supporters feel positive in their role. In a review, Cowie and Smith (2010) argued that schools using well-managed peer support schemes are seen as being more caring and concerned about pupil well-being, and the schemes are known and supported by pupils and staff; in addition, the peer supporters themselves generally benefit from the experience. There is evidence from individual cases that some pupils, who use peer support schemes for reasons of being bullied, report being helped. However most of the relevant studies do not report significant changes in general levels of bullying behaviour as a result of implementing a peer support scheme.
39 A UK charity, Beatbullying, launched a new form of virtual peer support called CyberMentors in 2009. Students are trained as cybermentors, log on and mentor on demand. Cybermentors can refer mentees on to senior cybermentors and counselors for further support if necessary. This scheme is being extended to other European countries.
40 Reactive strategies are a response to bullying incidents when they have happened. Reactive strategies range from sanction-based approaches, through restorative practices, to more indirect and non-punitive approaches. Direct sanctions range from
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verbal reprimands from the head teacher; meetings involving parents or carers; temporary removal from class; withdrawal of privileges and rewards; disciplinary measures such as detentions; punishment such as litter-picking/ school clean-ups; through to temporary or permanent exclusion. Restorative approaches aim to restore good relationships rather than mete out punishment; they include a hierarchy of flexible responses, ranging from informal conversations through to formal facilitated meetings or conferences. The underlying principle is to work to resolve conflict and repair harm. Non-punitive approaches include the Pikas method, and the Support Group Method. These do not hold the perpetrator responsible directly, but aim to change problem behaviours through a mixture of peer pressure to elicit a prosocial response, and self realisation of the harm and suffering caused to the victim. There is continuing controversy over the best balance between these approaches (Rigby, 2010; Thompson & Smith, 2012).
Evaluations of program interventions
41 There are anti-bullying programs available with a structured set of components and sequence of activities. The first was the Norwegian Nationwide campaign against bullying, which was launched through mass publicity in 1983, and involved a survey in schools; resources for teachers (curricular materials and videos) and advice for parents. This was developed by Olweus into the Olweus Bulling Prevention Program (OBPP) (Olweus, 1999; Olweus & Limber, 2010); this has school-level components, classroom- level components, individual-level components, and community-level component).
42 An evaluation in the First Bergen Project (1983-85) involved 42 schools. The effect on rates of bullying was dramatic with reported victim rates falling by around 50%, for both boys and girls. A second Bergen project (1997-98) involved 14 intervention schools and 16 comparison schools. Bullying decreased by between 21-38% in intervention schools, with no change or increase in comparison schools. A first Oslo project (2001-2002) in 37 schools showed reductions of some 30-45% in victimisation and bullying. Olweus and Limber (2010) report findings associated with a New National initiative in Norway, with reductions in the range of 37%-49%. The success of the OBPP in Norway is thus substantial and well-replicated. The program has been used outside Norway, for example in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA, but with less consistent success (Thompson & Smith, 2012).
43 A recent and ongoing program in Finland, the KiVa Koulu program, is innovative in its methods and producing findings on a level with the OBPP in Norway (Kärnä et al., 2011). KiVa includes universal interventions (e. g. via the classroom) and targeted interventions (individual discussions with victims and bullying children, and using prosocial, high-status peers to be defenders). The classroom work includes an anti- bullying virtual learning environment; the KiVa computer game uses simulated characters and episodes learn facts and try out strategies, which can then be applied to everyday life at school. So far evaluations have been encouraging, with reductions of around 34-37%, with indications that both more disciplinary methods, and non- punitive approaches, can be helpful. Although primarily designed with traditional bullying in mind, evaluations so far show that KiVa is as effective in reducing cyberbullying as it is for a range of traditional forms (Salmivalli, Kärnä, & Poskiparta, 2011).
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Meta-analyses of large-scale interventions
44 Ttofi and Farrington (2011) provide a meta-analysis of 44 school-based intervention programmes internationally. They found that on average, these reduced bullying by around 20-23% and victimisation by around 17-20%; although there is considerable variation in outcomes. They also examined, across programs, which program components were most associated with success. For reducing victim rates, most associated with success were use of videos, disciplinary methods, parent training/ meetings, and cooperative group work; but work with peers was associated with a significant increase in victimization. For reducing bullying, most associated with success were parent training/meetings, improved playground supervision, disciplinary methods, school conferences, information for parents, classroom rules, classroom management and teacher training.
45 The overall conclusion of reductions of around 20% or more appears a robust finding, and quite encouraging, even if many programs do not reach the success of OBPP in Norway, or KiVa in Finland. The conclusions drawn about individual component effectiveness are an important step forward, but likely to be less robust. Their analysis is limited historically in that the interventions surveyed cover some 25 years, whereas methods of intervention have been and still are being developed and changed. Some of Ttofi and Farrington’s analyses (for example, suggesting that work with peers is relatively ineffective; or that disciplinary methods are advantageous) depend very much on how terms such as “work with peers” and “disciplinary methods” are interpreted. The importance of different intervention components is still a matter of debate (Smith, Salmivalli & Cowie, 2012).
46 The advent of cyberbullying in the last decade poses new challenges for anti-bullying interventions. There is considerable overlap in involvement in traditional forms of bullying and cyberbullying, but some distinctive features of cyberbullying also require other forms of intervention, including education on rights and responsibilities online (Bauman, 2010).
Conclusions
47 The need for continuing anti-bullying work, in schools and other places used by children and young people, is obvious from current prevalence rates and the accumulating evidence of the causal influence of victimization on mental health issues and adjustment. Present indications are that bullying is not getting worse. Over the last two decades a range of anti-bullying interventions have become available, and are disseminated and widely employed, in schools in industrialised countries. Reviews suggest that these have some success and are worthwhile in terms of reducing suffering and ultimately enhancing school climate and good citizenship. There is still much to be learnt, particularly about the effectiveness of specific intervention components. Cyberbullying provides new challenges, as being a relatively new form of bullying with its own characteristics and somewhat different modes of effective intervention.
48 School bullying is an area where research and practice have gone hand in hand, with good evidence that the outcomes have improved pupil well-being and happiness. The
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continuing synergy between research findings, both national and international, and policy and practice, has promise of building on the modest but significant successes so far, in creating safer environments in which children and young people can live, grow, play and learn.
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Jimerson, S. R., S. M. Swearer, and D. L. Espelage (eds.) (2010), Handbook of Bullying in Schools. An International Perspective, New York & London, Routledge.
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Livingstone, S., L. Haddon, A. Görzig, and K. Ólafsson (2011), Risks and Safety on the Internet. The Perspective of European Children. Full Findings, London, LSE, EU Kids Online.
Mahdavi, J., and P. K. Smith (2007), “Individual risk factors or group dynamics? An investigation of the scapegoat hypothesis of victimisation in school classes”, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, pp. 353-371.
Mishna, F. (2003), “Learning disabilities and bullying: double jeopardy”, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36, pp. 336-347.
Monks, C. P., P. K. Smith, P. Naylor, C. Barter, J. L. Ireland, and I. Coyne (2009), “Bullying in different contexts: commonalities, differences and the role of theory”, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14, pp. 146-156.
Nesdale, D., K. Durkin, A. Maass, J. Kiesner, and J. A. Griffiths (2008), “Effects of group norms on children’s intentions to bully”, Social Development, 17, pp. 889-907.
Nickerson, A. B., D. Mele, and K. M. Osborne-Oliver (2010), “Parent-child relationships and bullying”, in S. R. Jimerson, S. M. Swearer, and D. L. Espelage (eds.), Handbook of Bullying in Schools. An International Perspective, New York & London, Routledge, pp. 187-197.
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Nickerson, A. B., D. Mele, and D. Princiotta (2008), “Attachment and empathy as predictors of roles as defenders or outsiders in bullying interactions”, Journal of School Psychology, 46, pp. 687-703.
Olweus, D. (1999), “Sweden”, in P. K. Smith, Y. Morita, J. Junger-Tas, D. Olweus, R. Catalano, and P. Slee (eds.) (1999), The Nature of School Bullying. A Cross-National Perspective, London & New York, Routledge, pp. 7-27.
Olweus, D., and S. Limber (2010), “The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: implementation and evaluation over two decades”, in S. R. Jimerson, S. Swearer, and D. L. Espelage (eds.), Handbook of Bullying in Schools. An International Perspective, New York & London, Routledge, pp. 377-401.
Pornari, C. D., and J. Wood (2009), “Peer and cyber aggression in secondary school students: the role of moral disengagement, hostile attribution bias, and outcomes expectancies”, Aggressive Behavior, 36, pp. 81-94.
Rigby, K. (2002), New Perspectives on Bullying, London & Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley.
Rigby, K. (2010), Bullying Interventions in Schools. Six Basic Approaches, Camberwell, ACER.
Rigby, K., and P. K. Smith (2011), “Is school bullying really on the rise?”, Social Psychology of Education, 14, pp. 441-455.
Rivers, I. (2011), Homophobic Bullying. Research and Theoretical Perspectives, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Rivers, I., and N. Noret (2010), “I h8 u’: findings from a five-year study of text and email bullying”, British Educational Research Journal, 36, pp. 643-671.
Roekel, E. van, R. H. J. Scholte, and R. Didden (2009), “Bullying among adolescents with autism spectrum disorders: prevalence and perception”, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, pp. 63-73.
Rothon, C., J. Head, E. Klineberg, and S. Stansfeld (2011), “Can social support protect bullied adolescents from adverse outcomes? A prospective study on the effects of bullying on academic achievement and mental health of adolescents at secondary schools in East London”, Journal of Adolescence, 34, pp. 579-588.
Salmivalli, C. (2010), “Bullying and the peer group: a review”, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 15, pp. 112-120.
Salmivalli, C., A. Kärnä, and E. Poskiparta (2011), “Counteracting bullying in Finland: the KiVA Program and its effects on different forms of being bullied”, International Journal of Behavioural Development, 35, pp. 405-411.
Salmivalli, C., K. Lagerspetz, K. Björkqvist, K. Österman, and A. Kaukiainen (1996), “Bullying as a group process: participant roles and their relations to social status within the group”, Aggressive Behavior, 22, pp. 1-15.
Sawyer, A. L., C. P. Bradshaw, and L. M. O’Brennan (2008), “Examining ethnic, gender, and developmental differences in the way children report being a victim of ‘bullying’ on self-report measures”, Journal of Adolescent Health, 43, pp. 106-114.
Schreier, A., D. Wolke, K. Thomas, J. Horwood, C. Hollis, D. Gunnell, G. Lewis, A. Thompson, S. Zammit, L. Duffy, G. Salvi, and G. Harrison (2009), “Prospective study of peer victimization in childhood and psychotic symptoms in a nonclinical population at age 12 years”, Archives of General Psychiatry, 66, pp. 527-536.
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Smith, P. K. (2012), “Cyberbullying and cyber aggression”, in S. R. Jimerson., A. B. Nickerson., M. J. Mayer., and M. J. Furlong (eds.), Handbook of School Violence and School Safety. International Research and Practice, New York, Routledge, pp. 93-103 (2nd ed.).
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Smith, P. K., Y. Morita, J. Junger-Tas, D. Olweus, R. Catalano, and P. Slee (eds.) (1999), The Nature of School Bullying. A Cross-National Perspective, London & New York, Routledge.
Smith, P. K., D. Pepler, and K. Rigby (eds.) (2004), Bullying in Schools. How Successful Can Interventions Be?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
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Sutton, J., P. K. Smith, and J. Swettenham (1999), “Bullying and theory of mind: a critique of the ‘social skills deficit’ view of anti-social behavior”, Social Development, 8, pp. 117-127.
Thompson, F., and P. K. Smith (2012), “Anti-bullying strategies in schools: what is done and what works”, British Journal of Educational Psychology, Monograph Series II, 9, pp. 154-173.
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Ttofi, M. M., and D. P. Farrington (2011), “Effectiveness of school-based programs to reduce bullying: a systematic and meta-analytic review”, Journal of Experimental Criminology, 7, pp. 27-56.
Ttofi, M. M., D. P. Farrington, F. Lösel, and R. Loeber (2011), “Do the victims of school bullies tend to become depressed later in life? A systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies”, Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 3, pp. 63-73.
Vandebosch, H., and K. van Cleemput (2008), “Defining cyberbullying: a qualitative research into the perceptions of youngsters”, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 11, pp. 499-503.
Ybarra, M. L., and K. J. Mitchell (2004), “Online aggressor/targets, aggressors, and targets: a comparison of associated youth characteristics”, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45, pp. 1308-1316.
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RÉSUMÉS
Le harcèlement est défini comme un abus systématique de pouvoir. Le développement du programme de recherche sur le harcèlement à l’école se décline en quatre phases. La nature distincte du cyber-harcèlement, ainsi que de l’identifié fondée sur le harcèlement, est soulignée. Les méthodes de mesure sont discutées et les types de taux de prévalence obtenus. Un ensemble de facteurs de risque pour devenir un harceleur ou une victime sont énoncés. Une série d’interventions centrées sur l’école sont décrites, avec la discussion d’une méta-analyse des résultats. En résumé, la recherche et la pratique se côtoient dans la recherche analysée, et elles ont du moins contribué à réduire un problème important dans la vie de beaucoup d’enfants.
Bullying is defined as a systematic abuse of power; the development of the research program on school bullying is outlined over four phases. The distinctive nature of cyberbullying, and also of identity-based bullying, is outlined. Measurement methods are discussed, and the kinds of prevalence rates obtained. A range of risk factors for involvement as a bully, or victim, are summarized. A range of school-based interventions are described, together with discussion of a meta-analysis of their outcomes. In summary, research and practice have gone hand-in-hand in the research reviewed, and have had some success in at least reducing what is a significant problem in the lives of many children.
O bullying é definido como um abuso sistemático de poder. O desenvolvimento do programa de pesquisa sobre bullying escolar é delineado em quatro fases. É sublinhada a natureza distinta do cyberbullying, e também da identidade baseada no bullying. Discute-se os métodos de medição e os tipos de taxas de prevalência obtidos. Enuncia-se um conjunto de fatores de risco para o envolvimento como agressor/vítima. Descreve-se uma série de intervenções centradas na escola juntamente com a discussão de uma meta-análise dos seus resultados. Em resumo, a investigação e a prática têm andado a par na pesquisa analisada, e tiveram algum sucesso pelo menos em reduzir o que é um problema significativo na vida de muitas crianças.
El bullying es definido como un abuso sistemático de poder. El desarrollo del programa de investigación sobre bullying escolar está delineado en cuatro fases. La naturaleza distinta del cyberbullying, y también de la identidad basada en el bullying, son subrayados. Se discuten los métodos de medición y los tipos de tasas de prevalencia obtenidos. Se encuentran resumidos un conjunto de factores de riesgo para la transformación como un agresor, o víctima. Una serie de intervenciones centradas en la escuela son descritas, conjuntamente con la discusión de un meta- análisis de sus resultados. En resumen, la investigación y la práctica van de la mano en la pesquisa analizada, y tuvieron algún éxito por lo menos en reducir lo que es un problema significativo en la vida de muchos niños.
INDEX
Mots-clés : harceleur, victime, cyber-harcèlement, gérer/affronter, intervention Palavras-chave : bully, vítima, cyber/virtual, lidar/enfrentar, intervenção Palabras claves : bully, víctima, cyber/virtual, lidiar/enfrentar, intervención Keywords : bully, victim, cyber, coping, intervention
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AUTEUR
PETER K. SMITH
Emeritus Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, Department of Psychology, Unit for School and Family Studies. E-mail: [email protected]
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The evolution of drug trafficking and organized crime in latin america A evolução do tráfico de drogas e do crime organizado na América Latina L’évolution du trafic de drogue et du crime organisé en Amérique latine La evolución del tráfico de drogas y del crimen organizado en América Latina
Bruce Bagley
Introduction
1 What are the major trends that have characterized the evolution of illicit drug trafficking and organized crime (organized criminal networks) in the Americas over the last quarter of a century? Which have been the principal transformations or adaptations — economic, political and organizational — that have taken place within the region’s vast illegal drug economy during first decade of the twenty first century? This essay identifies eight key trends or patterns that typify the ongoing transformation of the drug trade and the organized criminal groups it has spawned as of mid-2011. They are: (1) the increasing globalization of drug consumption; (2) the limited or “partial victories” and unintended consequences of the US-led “War on Drugs”, especially in the Andes; (3) the proliferation of areas of drug cultivation and of drug smuggling routes throughout the hemisphere (so-called “balloon effects”); (4) the dispersion and fragmentation of organized criminal groups or networks within countries and across sub-regions (“cockroach effects”); (5) the failure of political reform and state-building efforts (deinstitutionalization effects); (6) the inadequacies or failures of US domestic drug and crime control policies (demand control failures); (7) the ineffectiveness of regional and international drug control policies (regulatory failures); (8) the growth in support for harm reduction, decriminalization and legalization policy alternatives (legalization debate).
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The globalization of drug consumption
2 Many Latin American political leaders have long argued that if the US population did not consume such large quantities of illegal drugs — if there were not so many American drug addicts and users — then Latin American and Caribbean countries would not produce large quantities of illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin for export and the region would not be plagued by the powerful and well-financed drug trafficking organizations — often called cartels — that have sprung up throughout the hemisphere over the last twenty five years plus.1 It is certainly accurate to claim that the United States has been for decades, and remains today, the largest single consumer market for illicit drugs on the planet. Although there is no definitive estimate, the value of all illicit drugs sold annually in the United States may reach as high as US $150 billion. Some $37 billion per year may be spent on cocaine alone (UNODC, 2010b: 5-6; 2011: 8).
3 Nonetheless, illegal drug use (and/or addiction) is not a uniquely “American” disease, despite the title of David Musto’s pioneering book on the origins of drug control in the United States (David F. Musto, 1999). Over the last decade, the now-27 countries of the European Union have increased to 4.3 to 4.75 million cocaine users, which represents 30% of the world-wide consumption in cocaine. The Europeans are almost closing the gap with the approximately 5 million regular cocaine users found in the United States.2 Indeed, levels of cocaine use in the United States have dropped steadily since the early 1990s while cocaine consumption in Europe exploded exponentially during the first decade of the twenty first century. In fact, the number of cocaine users in the four EFTA and 27 EU countries doubled from 1998 through 2006.3 Moreover, the Europeans pay more than twice as much per gram, ounce, kilo, or metric ton as do American consumers. The UNODC 2011 report estimated that Americas combined together consumed 63% of the 440 mt of cocaine available, while the European population consumed 29% of the world supply. However, cocaine consumption in the US has decreased by 40% from 1999 to 2009.4 The global heroin market is quite complicated in terms of the supply chain. Afghanistan leads the world in heroin production, producing 380 mt or 83%. It has been estimated that Afghanistan produced 6,900 of opium in 2009 alone. With the exception of Latin America, the heroin produced from Afghanistan is trafficked to every major region around the world. Next, Myanmar produces 5%, while Mexico produces 9% of the heroin supply. The supply produced from Mexico is trafficked to the US market. Colombia, on the other hand, only accounts for 1 mt, which is approximately 0% of the world production of heroin. In terms of consumption, the UNODC 2011 report estimates that Central and West Europe consumed 70 mt of heroin alone in 2009. People residing in East Europe consumed even more heroin, approximately 73 mt in 2009. Over the last decade or more, the bulk of the heroin consumed in Europe has come from Afghanistan, whereas most of the heroin consumed in the United States comes from either Colombia (roughly 2% of word supply) or Mexico (roughly 1.5% of world supply, UNODC, World Drug Report, 2011: 71-73). Cocaine, in contrast, is produced in only three countries of the Western Hemisphere: Colombia (45%), Peru (35-40%) and Bolivia (15-20%). Cocaine is trafficked from these three Andean countries to 174 countries around the globe (see figure 1; also UNODC, 2010b: 81-82).
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Figure 1 Major global cocaine flows, 2008 (*)
4 Cocaine consumption is not limited only to advance capitalist markets such as those of the United States and Europe.5 Cocaine use in Latin America has also skyrocketed over the last decade. Indeed, Latin American consumers were in 2010 estimated to absorb some 200 metric tons of cocaine. Until 2009, Brazil was considered to be the world’s second largest market for cocaine behind only the United States.6 In the 2011 World Drug Report, the United Nations reports that Brazil has replaced Argentina as the second biggest consumer of cocaine. The report estimates that Brazil has 900,000 cocaine users, which makes it the number one consumer in South America. Cocaine use in Argentina is reported to be 2.6% and 2.4% in Chile (UNODC, 2011: 91). Cocaine consumption rates are quite high in other regions of the world. In 2009, Africa had between 940.000 on the lower end and 4.42 million cocaine users on the higher end. During the same year, Asia has an estimated 400,000 cocaine users on the lower end and 2.3 million users on the higher end. Eastern and South-Eastern Europe had less cocaine users in 2009 (310,000 on the lower end and 660,000 on the upper end; UNODC, 2011: 86). The dramatic rises in European and South American cocaine consumption specifically have greatly expanded world market demand for this illicit Andean product over the past decade. As a consequence, a pronounced trend toward the proliferation of new global trafficking routes and the increased involvement of criminal trafficking networks originating outside the Andean sub region became increasingly evident.
Partial victories in the Andean war on drugs
5 From the middle of the nineteenth century through the mid-1980s, Peru and Bolivia were the two principal country-suppliers of both coca leaf and of refined cocaine to the US, European and other world markets (Paul Gootenberg, 2008: 1-14 and passim). As of 1985, Peru produced roughly 65% of the world’s supply of coca leaf while Bolivia grew approximately 25% and Colombia 10% or less (Bagley, 2009a: 25; Clawson and Lee III,
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1998: 12-16). With the “partial victories” achieved by the US-led war on drugs in the southern Andes during the late 1980s and early 1990s — specifically, US-financed crop eradication programs in Bolivia’s Chapare under President Victor Paz Estensoro after 1986 (Operation Blast Furnace) and Presidents Hugo Banzer/Jorge Quiroga from 1998 to 2002 (Plan Dignidad), along with Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s interruption of the “air bridge” between the Alto Huallaga coca region in Peru and the clandestine cocaine laboratories located in Colombia in the mid-1990s, coca cultivation in the Andes rapidly shifted to Colombia in the mid- and late 1990s.7 By 2000, Colombia cultivated an estimated 90% of the world’s coca leaf while production in Peru and Bolivia dwindled to historic lows (Bagley, 2009a: 29; UNODC, 2006).
6 In the early 1990s, Colombia’s US-backed all-out war against drug lord Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel during the César Gaviria administration lead to Escobar’s death on December 2, 1993, and the rapid dissolution of the Medellín cartel (Dudley, 2004: 195-198; Vallejo, 2007: 352-385). Subsequent plea bargaining in 1994-95 during the Ernesto Samper administration with the major drug lords of the Cali cartel, specifically the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, catalyzed the dismantling of the Cali cartel.8 While some large criminal trafficking networks (e.g., the Cartel del Norte del Valle), continued to operate in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, some 300 plus smaller drug trafficking organizations (known as cartelitos) surfaced to fill the vacuum left by the dismantling of the two major cartels in the political economy of Colombia’s still highly profitable drug trade. By the late 1990s, basically as an unanticipated and unintended consequence of the demise of the country’s major cartels, Colombia’s leftwing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC) guerrillas and rightwing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC) paramilitary militias took control of coca cultivation and processing throughout rural Colombia, precipitating increased drug- related violence between these two groups of armed illegal actors, each of whom sought to eliminate the other and to consolidate their own territorial control over drug cultivation regions and the peasant growers across the Colombian countryside (Bagley, 2009a: 28-29).
7 As a direct result, levels of drug-fueled violence in Colombia spiraled out of control in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Indeed, during much of the first decade of the 2000s Colombia became one of the most dangerous and violent countries in the world. In July 2000, President Clinton and the US government responded by backing the Andrés Pastrana administration in its war against run away drug production and trafficking in Colombia via the adoption of Plan Colombia. In August 2002, the newly inaugurated government of Álvaro Uribe received additional drug war assistance from Washington and the George W. Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Supported by almost $8 billion in US aid under Plan Colombia over the course of a decade, by 2010 Colombian President Uribe and his program of “democratic security” had managed to beat back the FARC guerrillas, demobilize many — if not all — of the country’s paramilitary bands, and substantially reduce the country’s astronomically high levels of drug-related violence.9
8 Despite the substantial achievements of Plan Colombia and the Uribe administration’s “democratic security” policies, however, as of 2010 Colombia remained a principal source of coca leaf and refined cocaine in the Andes and drug-related violence and criminality appeared to be once again on the rise. The 2011 UN Drug Report states that
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the area used for cultivating coca in Colombia decreased by an estimated 15% in 2010, leaving Colombia just a slightly ahead of Peru as the world’s largest coca leaf producer. Currently, the area under cultivation in Colombia is estimated at 62,000 ha. In comparison, 2009 statistics report 73,000 ha in terms of area under cultivation.10 As an unintended consequence of the US-backed war on drugs in Colombia, the locus of organized criminal involvement in cocaine trafficking gradually shifted northwards from Colombia to Mexico. As the Uribe administration and the US-backed Plan Colombia succeeded at least partially in Colombia in the war against cocaine traffickers, the major drug trafficking networks in Mexico took advantage of the vacuum left in the drug trade to take over control of cocaine smuggling operations from Colombia into the United States. As a consequence, drug-related violence and criminality shifted northwards into Mexican territory as various Mexican trafficking organizations vied for control over the highly lucrative smuggling trade from Colombia and the southern Andes into the large and profitable US market.11
9 Thus, Mexico’s current drug-related bloodbath is, in part, directly attributable to the partial victory in the war on drugs achieved in Colombia in recent years via Plan Colombia. If the US-backed Mérida Initiative presently being implemented in Mexico achieves results similar to those of Plan Colombia, it will not halt drug trafficking or end organized crime in Mexico or the region. The most likely outcome is that it will drive both further underground in Mexico while pushing many smuggling activities and criminal network operations into neighboring countries such as Guatemala and Honduras and back to Colombia and the Andes. Indeed, evidence that some Mexican drug trafficking operations (Sinaloa, Zetas) are moving from Mexico into Central America is already abundant.12
Proliferation of areas of cultivation and smuggling routes (the balloon effect)
10 The 2010 World Drug Report indicates that Colombia successfully reduced the total number of hectares under coca cultivation within its national territory in the second half of the 2000s, although production has still not returned to pre-2000 levels. How large the reductions in Colombian coca cultivation in the past three years have actually been is a controversial topic, plagued by inadequate data, methodological problems, and major uncertainties regarding the actual extent of cultivation and yield levels. Given similar caveats, coca cultivation in both Peru and Bolivia, after almost two decades of decline, appears once again to have expanded.13 Most observers believe that overall coca leaf production and cocaine availability in the Andean region remain roughly on par with 2000 levels and well above those of 1990 or 1995. Evidently, the balloon effect that allowed coca cultivation to shift north from Bolivia and Peru to Colombia in the 1990s continues to operate as cultivation moved back into Peru and Bolivia from Colombia at the end of the first decade of the 2000s. Various observers have speculated about the possibility that the tropical variety of coca — known in Portuguese as Epadu — might well balloon coca cultivation from its traditional growing areas on the eastern slopes of the Andes into Brazil and elsewhere in the Amazon basin in coming years, if ongoing or renewed eradication efforts prove successful in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
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11 The 2010 UN report registered a 10-20% decline in coca production in Colombia from 2008 to 2009.14 But enthusiasm regarding such statistics should be tempered by realism. First, it is important to note that year-to-year variations are commonplace owing to climate factors and short-term disruptions; declines over several years are required to identify enduring trends. Second, the UN statistics are approximations along a range rather than firm data points; it is entirely possible that the 2010 UN report underestimate the real levels of production. Third, innovations in more productive hybrid plants, yields-per-hectare and processing can produce higher levels of refined cocaine production than anticipated by the UN analysts. Finally, the ongoing decentralization and dispersion of cultivation in Colombia makes accurate mapping of the total numbers of hectares under cultivation a very problematic endeavor.15
12 Such caveats aside, the key reason that Colombia appears to have experienced a significant decline in coca production in 2008 and 2009 is that the Uribe government moved away from its almost exclusive (US-backed) reliance on aerial spraying to a more effective mixture of spraying and manual eradication linked to comprehensive alternative development programs in key coca growing areas such as La Macarena. As a consequence of the weakening of FARC control in vast stretches of rural Colombia and the partial demobilization of the paramilitary bands engaged in drug trafficking over the period 2002-2007, 2008-2009 marked the beginning of an important decline after at least three years of steady increases in total production. To sustain this decline will certainly require that Colombia continue its manual eradication efforts and that it provide additional funds for well-designed and executed alternative development programs in coca growing areas throughout the country (Youngers and Walsh, 2010; also Felbab-Brown et al., 2009; US GAO, 2008; Isacson and Poe, 2009).
13 Meanwhile, recent increases in coca cultivation in both Peru and Bolivia suggest that the focus of US attention and resources on Colombia has led to the neglect of coca cultivation in those traditional coca growing countries in the central Andes. To forestall a recurrence of the balloon effect — pushing cultivation out of one country only to have it reappear in others — the Obama administration will have to seek to reestablish a workable relation with the government of President Evo Morales in Bolivia and find effective ways to combat the resurgence of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and coca cultivation in Peru. Failure to achieve more effective drug control policies in both countries will likely result in a continuing shift of coca production back to Peru and Bolivia, thereby nullifying any real progress made in reducing coca cultivation in Colombia over the medium term.16
14 In the 1980s, largely as a result of the formation of the US government’s South Florida Task Force in 1982 — headed by then-Vice President George H. W. Bush — the established Caribbean routes used by the Medellín and Cali cartels in the 1970s and early 1980s were essentially closed down by American law enforcement and military operations. They were quickly replaced over the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s with new routes that used Panama and Central America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Corridor to reach Mexico and then cross from Mexico into United States (Bagley, 2011; Scott and Marshall, 1998: 186-192). When the Mexican cartels took over from Medellín and Cali in the late 1990s, the Pacific Corridor became the principal smuggling route northwards from Colombia to the United States, although the Gulf route also remained active.17 From December 1, 2006, onward Mexican President Felipe Calderón, with Washington’s active assistance since 2008 via the Mérida Initiative, has waged an
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intense military campaign against Mexico major drug cartels.18 Although not by any means successful in eliminating Mexico key drug trafficking groups as of 2010, Calderón’s militarization of the drug war has unquestionably made smuggling across the US-Mexican border from Mexico more dangerous and expensive than in past years. As a result, some of the Mexican trafficking organizations have begun to move into Central America — especially Guatemala and Honduras — to take advantage of these much weaker states to conduct their smuggling operations, (Bagley, 2011; Farah, 2011; ICG, 2011: 3; Dudley, 2011: passim).
15 There is also abundant evidence indicating increased use of both Venezuelan and Ecuadoran territory by Colombian traffickers to replace the increasingly problematic Mexico routes. Venezuela is a jumping off point for smuggling through the Caribbean to the east coast of the United States or across the Atlantic through West Africa into Europe. Venezuela also is used for drug flights into Honduras or Guatemala where the shipments are then transferred to trucks and transported by land across the Guatemalan-Mexican border northwards to the United States.19
16 The balloon effects produced by the partial victories in the war on drugs in the Andes on both drug cultivation and drug smuggling routes are evident. Over the past twenty five years and more, the war on drugs conducted by the United States and its various Latin American and Caribbean allies has succeeded repeatedly in shifting coca cultivation from one area to another in the Andes and in forcing frequent changes in smuggling routes. But it has proven unable to disrupt seriously, much less stop permanently, either production or trafficking in the hemisphere. The traffickers constant, successful adaptations to law enforcement measures designed to end their activities have lead to the progressive contamination of more and more countries in the region by the drug trade and its attendant criminality and violence (Archibald and Cave, 2011).
Dispersion and fragmentations of criminal drug trafficking organizations (the cockroach effect)
17 The differential insertion of individual countries into the political economy of drug trafficking in the hemisphere has produced a variety of forms or types of intermediation between peasant growers of illicit crops and consumers. In Bolivia, the presence of peasant cooperatives in the countryside since the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (National Revolutionary Movement, or MNR) revolution of 1952 produced coca grower associations and generally inhibited the rise of either criminal organizations or guerrilla movements as intermediaries, although the Bolivian military itself has on various occasions fulfilled this role.20 In Peru, the absence of strong grass roots associations among peasant growers opened the way for both elements of the country’s military apparatus (led by intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos) and guerrilla organizations (Sendero Luminoso) to perform the role of intermediaries or traffickers.21 In Colombia, the absence of both peasant organizations and military intermediaries paved the way for the rise of major criminal organizations such as the Medellín and Cali cartels to fill the role. The demise of the major cartels opened the way for illegal armed actors such as the FARC and the paramilitaries.22 In Mexico and Central America, elements of the military and/or police have sometimes performed the functions of intermediation in previous decades, but in the 1990s and 2000s these
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countries have followed the Colombian pattern of criminal intermediation owing to the absence strong grower associations (Thoumi, 2003: 159-264; Healy, 1988; ICG, 2005).
18 In terms of criminal organizations or criminal trafficking networks, Colombia and Mexico provide the two most important examples over the last twenty five years. In Colombia, the rise and fall of Medellin and Cali (and subsequently the Norte del Valle cartel) vividly illustrate the perils and vulnerabilities of large, hierarchical criminal trafficking organizations, especially when they attempt to confront the state openly. Both major cartels in Colombia were hierarchically structured and proved to be vulnerable targets for Colombian and international law enforcement agencies. In the wake of Medellin and Cali, Colombia witnessed a rapid fragmentation and dispersion of criminal networks that have proven far more difficult for law enforcement authorities to track down and dismantle than their larger and more notorious predecessors (Garzón, 2008; Garay-Salamanca, Salcedo-Albarán and León-Beltrán, 2010). Although there may be counter-tendencies leading to re-concentration among criminal trafficking organizations in Colombia today (e.g., los Rastrojos, las Águilas Negras), the basic lesson to emerge from Colombia appears to be that smaller criminal networks are less vulnerable to law enforcement and state repression. Colombia’s emergent Bandas Criminales (Bacrim), the descendants of the now formally demobilized paramilitary groups that made up the Colombian Sell-Defense Forces (Auto Defensas Unidas de Colombia — AUC) represent a new generation of drug traffickers in Colombia. They differ from the “paras” in several important respects: (1) they tend to be politically much more deft and subtle in seeking political alliances inside the Colombian economic and political establishment, often hiding their political linkages through indirect contacts and “clean” candidates without records of paramilitary affiliations or ties in the past; (2) they focus on establishing political influence at the municipal and departmental (provincial) levels rather than the national level; (3) the locus of their activities includes not only Colombia’s Caribbean coast but also the Pacific southwest; and (4) they have expanded their economic interests beyond drug trafficking to include other illegal activities (land piracy, gold mining, timber) as well as legal enterprises. From the Colombian state’s perspective, such organizations are, at least to date, far less threatening because they do not have the capacity to threaten state security directly (Pachico, 2011a).
19 In Mexico, as in Colombia in the 1980s and early 1990s, cocaine profits appear to have energized the country’s major criminal networks and unleashed a wave of violence among criminal organizations seeking to strengthen and consolidate their control of key smuggling routes. As of 2011, this struggle was still playing itself out in brutal and bloody fashion. Nonetheless, Mexico’s criminal trafficking groups do appear to be gradually following the Colombian pattern of dispersion and fragmentation, although the evidence is not yet conclusive. In 2000, the Tijuana cartel (Arrellano Félix family) and the Juárez cartel (Carrillo Fuentes family) were the two largest and most dominant drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. Since 2000, after the Vicente Fox administration first went after Tijuana and then Juárez, Mexico has seen the rise of at least five new major trafficking organizations and a host of smaller, lesser known groups: Sinaloa, Gulf, Familia Michocana, Beltrán-Leyva, and Zetas.23 This dispersion of criminal networks in Mexico may well represent the beginning of the kind of fragmentation observed in Colombia in the 1990s. If it does, the trend would be warmly welcomed by Mexican governing authorities because it would portend a considerable
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diminution in the capacity of organized criminal networks in Mexico to directly challenge state authority and national security.
Table 1 Proliferation of Mexican Cartels, 2006-2010(*)
20 A key reason that some analysts do not accept the fragmentation of organized crime thesis in contemporary Mexico relates directly to the emergence of a new criminal network model — the Sinaloa cartel. Unlike its predecessors and current rivals in Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel is less hierarchical and more federative (hub and spokes) in its organizational structure. Its principal leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera has forged a new type of “federation” that gives greater autonomy (and profits) to affiliated groups. To date, Sinaloa, also known as the Federation, seems to be winning the war against its rivals, although its fight against the Zetas (a paramilitary-style organization) is proving to be prolonged, costly, and bloody. It is likely that the Sinaloa model will prove more sustainable — better for business — than other criminal trafficker organizational models in Mexico, but the jury is still out (Flores Pérez, 2009: 137-228; Chabat, 2010; Williams, 2010).
21 The escalating urban gang wars in Medellín, Colombia’s Comuna 13 neighborhood exemplify the kinds of violent internecine conflicts taking place over many contested drug trafficking areas and routes across the entire Latin American region (e.g., the states of Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Michoacán and Tamaulipas in Mexico, the Pacific coast of Guatemala, the Valle de Cauca Department near Cali, Colombia, the municipality of Caucasia in Colombia, or the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil). In Medellín, literally scores of relatively small, competing drug gangs have generated a pattern of “disorganized” crime: rather than rationally doing what would be “good for business — keeping murder rates low and police attention to a minimum — the criminal world is in turmoil and in need of an arbitrator to re-establish authority” (Pachico, 2011b: s.p.).
22 Like Mexico, where the splintering of authority has led to the creation of smaller but no less violent groups such as the Cartel de Acapulco and Mano con Ojos, Colombia’s drug gangs are fighting to establish their place in the new criminal hierarchy in Medellin’s
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poor and marginalized barrios long ignored by both the central Colombian state in Bogotá and by Medellín’s municipal government. Under former mayor (now governor of Antioquia) Sergio Fajardo, Medellin did see a significant decline in violence rates for several years — especially homicide statistics — via informal negotiations with the gangs, new mayoral initiatives to reduce gang violence (e.g., increased social services, expanded educational opportunities, jobs programs, new public recreational spaces for youth) and the demobilization of the nation’s paramilitary groups in 2005 and beyond. The relative peace achieved by the Fajardo administration in Medellin and the successor mayoral administration of Alonso Salazar, did, unfortunately, gradually give way to renewed violence in Medellin’s Comuna 13 and other urban neighbourhoods where drug trafficking and Bacrim activity resurged in 2010 and 2011. Medellin’s Comuna 13 or Ciudad Juarez’s Rivera del Bravo slums are perfect launching platforms for gang warfare. In such neighbourhoods, drug traffickers have found readily accessible pools of new gang members and many potential drug consumers, as well as efficient corridors for smuggling drugs and arms. In Comuna 13, the violence is mainly about controlling the San Juan highway, which leads out of the city to northern Antioquia and Urabá on Colombia’s northern Caribbean coast. The gangs that control the highway decide who and what enter and leave Medellín: drugs, guns, money. The armed group established by former Medellín capo Pablo Escobar, now known as “the Office”, remains the largest and most powerful criminal network in Medellín, even though it has splintered into rival factions and neither side has yet managed to achieve control over Comuna 13 and the San Juan transit route (ibid).
23 The maras (youth gangs) in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala, the Barrio Azteca prison gang in El Paso, Texas, and Juárez, Mexico, and the Comando Vermelho in Rio de Janeiro provide additional examples of the proliferation of gangs or pandillas that work and fight — often in close association with major cartels — that have appeared along with the phenomenon of fragmentation and dispersion. In 2004, for example, the armed wing of the Juárez Cartel — La Línea — started to attack the local police openly while employing the cobro de piso (right-of-way tax) to transit drug shipments through Chihuahua. This was possible owing to the incorporation of former police officials from Juárez into the ranks of the Juárez cartel. Following the intromission of the Sinaloa Cartel into Juárez in the mid-2000s, rising levels of violence and murder involving Los Aztecas, a gang affiliated with La Línea, against opposition gangs such as the Mexicles, the Artistas Asesinos (Artistic Assassins) and the Gente Nueva (new youth gangs) have been the order of the day in Juárez, the murder capital of Mexico (Dávila, 2010; Bowden, 2010). By October 2005, there were also an estimated 17,000 gang members that belong to the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 and the 18th Street operating in Ciudad Juárez, (Gereben Schaefer, Bahney and Riley, 2009). While no recent statistics are available, anecdotal evidence indicates that the numbers of maras active in Juarez and Mexico more generally appear to have increased steadily to above 25,000.
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Figure 2 Municipalities with five or more organized crime-related deaths 2007-2010
24 As in the Colombian case during the 1980s and 1990s, paramilitary groups have also surfaced in recent years in Juárez, Monterrey and other parts of Mexico in response to the cartels and affiliated gang violence. The appearance of these paramilitary bands highlights the weak law enforcement capacities of the Mexican government and its perceived inability to effectively confront and defeat the country’s powerful drug trafficking organizations.24
25 Under pressure from Mexican and US law enforcement, Mexican trafficker organizations have, since the mid-2000s if not before, sought to move at least part of their smuggling operations from Mexico into neighboring countries. Guatemala and Honduras are currently targets for both the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas.25 The upsurge in drug-related violence in both of these Central American nations is closely related to these shifts in operational bases. This trend, observable throughout the hemisphere, is sometimes labeled the “cockroach” effect, because it is reminiscent of the scurrying of cockroaches out of a dirty kitchen into other places to avoid detection after a light has been turned on them. Closely linked to the “balloon” effect, the “cockroach” effect refers specifically to the displacement of criminal networks from one city/state/region to another within a given country or from one country to another in search of safer havens and more pliable state authorities.
Failure of political reform or state building (the deinstitutionalization effect)
26 States determine the form or type of organized crime that can operate and flourish with a given national territory. Criminal organizations, in contrast, do not determine the type of state, although they certainly can deter or inhibit political reform efforts at all levels of a political system from local to national. Advanced capitalist democracies — from the United States to Europe to Japan — exhibit wide variations in the types of organized crime that they generate and/or tolerate. The United States, for example, has eliminated the Italian mafia model and seen it replaced by fragmented and widely dispersed domestic criminal organizations, many affiliated with immigrant communities. Europe is characterized by a similar evolution of organized crime groups affiliated with immigrant populations. Japan, in contrast, has coexisted with the Yakuza, a more corporate-style criminal network. In China, state capitalism coexists with the Chinese triads and other criminal organizations. In Russia, the Putin
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government, in effect, subordinated and incorporated various elements of the Russian mafia as para-state organizations (Bagley, 2004).
27 In Colombia, the paramilitary organizations, deeply involved in drug trafficking, were linked directly to both state institutions and to specific political parties. In Mexico, the formerly dominant PRI party developed almost tributary relations with organized crime groups. When the PRI’s almost 71-year monopoly over political power was broken at the national level in 2000 by the victory of PAN presidential candidate Vicente Fox, the old lines of tribute/bribery broke down as well and unleashed a wave of internecine violence among trafficking organizations as they struggled among themselves for control of cocaine transit through their country (Bagley and Hernández, 2010: 332).
28 Transitions from authoritarian regimes to more open and democratic forms of governance in Latin America, as in Russia and Eastern Europe, are particularly problematic, because the old, authoritarian institutional controls often collapse or are swept away but cannot be easily or quickly replaced by new, democratic forms of control, at least in the short term. Mexico is experiencing precisely such a transition. The old institutions — police, courts, prisons, intelligence agencies, parties, elections — no longer work. Indeed, they are manifestly corrupt and dysfunctional. Nevertheless, in practice, few new institutional mechanisms have arisen to replace them. Moreover, reform efforts can be, and often have been, stymied or derailed entirely by institutional corruption and criminal violence intended to limit or undermine state authority and the rule of law. There certainly are significant institutional reforms proposed or underway in México at the end of the Felipe Calderon sexenio (2006-12), but there is little question that such reforms have not come fast enough nor have they been deep enough to date to contain drug trafficking criminal organizations and related violence and corruption in México.
29 Such observations do not constitute arguments against democratization. Rather, they highlight challenges and obstacles along the road to democratization that are frequently overlooked or ignored altogether. Democratic theorists have only recently begun to seriously examine the problems for democratic transitions that emanate from organized and entrenched criminal networks. In the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, such neglect of institution reform may well imperil both political stability and democracy itself. Rather than democratic consolidation, the consequence of ignoring organized crime and its corrosive effects may well be institutional decay or democratic de-institutionalization. Countries emerging from internal armed conflicts are significantly more vulnerable, although such conflicts are not the only source of institutional weakness. Transitions from authoritarian to democratic political systems may also engender such institutional deficits even in the absence of prior prolonged internal conflict.
The inflexibility and ineffectiveness of regional and international drug control policies (regulatory failures)
30 Reflecting the hegemonic influence of the United States over international drug policy during the post-World War II period, the United Nations (UN) Organization of Drug Control (UNODC) and the Organization of American States (OAS) have both faithfully reproduced the US prohibitionist regime at the multilateral level. The UN’s approach to
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drug control (like that of the OAS) severely limits the flexibility of responses at the level of member-states because it effectively rules out any possible experimentation with legalization and/or decriminalization. Both the UN and the OAS part from the assumption that all illicit drugs are “evil” and must be prohibited and suppressed. In practice, the UN-OAS-US unwavering prohibitionist strategy has dominated international discourse on drug control and prevented individual countries from experimenting with alternative approaches (or forced them to ignore or defy their UN treaty obligations regarding narcotics control; see Thoumi, 2010; Global Commission on Drug Policy, 2011).
31 For example, both the UN, the OAS and the US have, in effect, systematically rejected Bolivian President Evo Morales’ declared policy of fostering traditional and commercial uses of legally grown coca leaf while prevent the processing of coca leaf into cocaine in that country. It must, of course, be recognized that coca cultivation in Bolivia did rise significantly in subsequent years beyond the amount that was necessary to supply traditional or ceremonial purposes and even “legal” non-cocaine uses. Similarly, both the US federal government and the UN opposed the November 2010 California ballot initiative that sought (and failed) to legalize marijuana cultivation and commercialization in that state. It is entirely possible that, had the California Proposition 19 initiative on marijuana been approved by the state’s voters, it would have run afoul of both US federal statutes and America’s UN treaty obligations.
32 In practice, the UN prohibitionist inclination has meant that there is little or no international backing for options other than the current “war on drugs, ” no matter what collateral damage is incurred in the process. The ten-year UN drug policy review of international drug control policies (1998-2008) predictably concluded that the current prohibitionist UN policies in place were the best and only real strategic option available moving forward and generated no significant alterations in international drug control policies and practices, despite growing doubts and questioning among some member states and many independent analysts (Pardo, 2010).
The failure of US drug control policies
33 While the United States has managed to stabilize or even reduce demand for most illicit drugs at home, it most certainly has not eliminated American demand for illicit drugs or the profits associated with supplying the huge US market. Demand control has routinely been underfunded by Washington while primary emphasis has almost automatically been accorded to expensive, but ultimately ineffective, supply-side control strategies. There have been some efforts since 2009 undertaken by the Obama administration, and his Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, to redress this long-standing imbalance in US drug policy, although prevention and treatment remain woefully underfunded. Analysis of the reasons behind the US insistence on supply over demand control strategies lies beyond the scope of this essay.
34 The consequences of Washington’s strategic choices are, however, obvious. Washington has demanded that the countries of the region follow its lead in the war on drugs and, as in previous years, upheld a formal “certification” process that often sanctioned those nations that did not “fully cooperate”. US insistence on such a policy approach has not only led to overall failure in the war on drugs over the last twenty five years plus, it has been counterproductive for both US and individual Latin American country
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interests. The price that Colombia has paid for its role in the war on drugs has been high in both blood and treasure. The price that Mexico is being asked to pay today is as high or higher. The high costs associated with failure have generated a reaction to the US strategy both at home and abroad and produced a new debate over alternatives to American prohibitionist approaches such as harm reduction, decriminalization, and legalization (Bagley and Tokatlian, 2007; Bagley, 2009b; 1988).
The search for alternatives: the debate over legalization, decriminalization, and harm reduction
35 Some Latin American analysts anticipated that the possible passage of California’s Proposition 19 in November 2010, which sought to legalize the cultivation, distribution and possession of marijuana in the state, would signal the beginning of the end of the US-led war on drugs and allow Mexico and other countries in the region to move away from the “prohibitionist” strategy that has generated so much drug-related violence throughout Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years. Many Latin American political leaders, however, openly oppose the legalization of marijuana in California and stridently argue against the legalization or decriminalization of harder drugs in the USA and around the globe. In the end, Proposition 19 was defeated at the polls by a 52% against versus almost 48% in favor among California voters. Undeterred, proponents of marijuana legalization in California are likely place another Prop-19 style initiative on the California ballot in November 2012 with the hope that a larger turn out among under 30 voters in a presidential year.
36 Whether one did or does favor marijuana legalization in California and beyond, there are many reasons to be skeptical of the real impact of marijuana legalization on drug trafficking and organized crime in California or anywhere else. First, even if such an initiative is ultimately approved in some American states, there are likely to be US federal government challenges that could delay implementation of any such new state laws for years. Second, legalization of marijuana, if and when it ever occurs, will not address the issues — production, processing, trafficking and distribution — raised by criminal activity, violence and corruption spawned by traffic in harder drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines among other. Criminal gangs in Mexico and elsewhere in the hemisphere will most likely move away from marijuana to deeper involvement in the still-illegal drugs, organized crime and drug-related violence will continue. In the long run, as the 2011 Global Commission on Drug Policy report argues, some combination of legalization and/or decriminalization of illicit drugs along with serious harm reduction policies and programs worldwide may well offer the only realistic formula for reducing the illicit profits that drive drug-related crime, violence and corruption in Latin America and the Caribbean and around the globe, even if addiction rates go up as they did with the end of US alcohol prohibition in the 1930s (Global Comission on Drug Policy, 2011). But in the short- and medium-run, Latin American and Caribbean countries will have to address their own seriously flawed institutions: ending long-standing corrupt practices; undertaking police, judicial, prison, and other key institutional reforms; and insuring greater electoral accountability. Such measures are essential for their own future political stability, democratic consolidation and national security and cannot wait for global decriminalization or legalization to take place at some nebulous point in the future.
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Neither the legalization of marijuana nor the decriminalization of harder drugs, when and if they ever take place, will constitute panaceas for the resolution of the problems created by proliferating crime, corruption, and violence throughout the region, for they will not do away with the many other types of organized crime that operate with virtual impunity in Latin America and the Caribbean today. 1The ex-presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, César Gaviria, and Ernesto Zedillo respectively, highlight the necessity that the United States and Europe should “design and implement policies leading to an effective reduction in their levels of drug consumption and, as a consequence, in the overall scope of the narcotics criminal activities (Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, 2008: 7).
2UNODC (2011: 87). Note that the 5 million users of cocaine in the US are between the ages of 15and64.
3Cocaine demand has been decreasing steadily in the US since 1982, from an estimated 10.5 million users in 1982 to some 5.3 in 2008. Cocaine users in the 27 European Union countries have, however, more than doubled in the past decade, increasing from 2 million in 1998 to 4.1 million in 2008 (4.5 million in all of Europe). UNODC, (2010c: 16); also UNODC (2010b: v-vi and 82); the consumption of cocaine has decreased in the US to 1.9% in 2009 to 2.5% in 2006. This information came from the UNDOC (2011: 93).
4Despite overall declines total area of coca leaf cultivation in the Andes, cocaine production remained essentially stable from the mid-1990s through 2008 at approximately 800-1,100 mt. North America, including Canada, accounted for some 40% of world-wide cocaine consumption. The EU and the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries consumed more than 25% of the world total. Together, these two regions accounted for more than 80% of the global cocaine market, estimated at US$ 88 billion in 2008 (UNODC, 2010b: 82). In 2008, the total value of worldwide cocaine and heroin markets combined was estimated at $US 153 billion (UNODC, 2010c: 19). These statistics are from the UNODC, World Drug Report (2011: 119).
5Some 4.3-4.75 million people have used cocaine in Europe as of 2009 (UNODC, 2011: 86).
6South America was the third largest consumer market for cocaine in the world in 2008 with some 2.4 million users. The bulk of South American consumption was concentrated in two countries of the Southern Cone, although there was evidence of rising cocaine use in virtually every country in the hemisphere. Given its population of nearly 200 million, Brazil had the largest number of users at roughly 1 million. But use was most intense in Argentina, where an estimated 2.6% of the adult population used cocaine in 2006 — a statistic roughly similar to that of the United States (UNODC,2010b: 82).
7After the Peru-Colombia “air bridge” that transported paste or base from Peru’s Alto Huallaga to Colombia by small airplanes was disrupted by Peruvian President’s Fujimori’s adoption of a shoot-down policy in 1993-94, the subsequent termination of the cocaine flights out of Peru during the Fujimori dictatorship in the mid-late 1990s, and the launching of Plan Dignidad in 1998 (with US Government funding) by the newly-installed Banzer government in Bolivia, the epicenter of illegal coca cultivation shifted from Eastern Peru and Bolivia to southeastern Colombia. Gootenberg (2008: 291-324); Clawson and Lee III (1998: 16-21); Francisco E. Thoumi (2003: 7 and passim).
8By September 1996, after allegations that the Cali Cartel financed Ernesto Samper’s presidential campaign had surfaced in 1994, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers and other major the Cali cartel leaders had been imprisoned in Colombia. See Maria Clemencia Ramirez Lemus, Kimberly
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Stanton and John Walsh (2005); also Camilo Chaparro (2005: 125-148). Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón y Antonio Sánchez (2007: 169-173).
9On the paramilitary demobilization, see Elvira María Restrepo and Bruce Bagley (2011). The Uribe Government emphasized a counterinsurgency strategy in Plan Colombia, an important difference from the Pastrana government’s original “Plan Marshall”. During 2002-2003 Uribe increased the number of combat troops and pursued constitutional reforms to expand the military activities (Ramírez Lemus, Stanton and John Walsh, 2005: 111-112).
10The 62,000 ha and 73,000 ha includes in the calculation small fields (UNODC, 2011: 100-111; Isacson, 2010).
11Bagley (2011: 31). The US government estimates that the Mexican cartels make $19 to 39 billion annually from the drug trade. Drug policy analyst Dr. Peter Reuter estimates Mexican cartel drug profits at the much lower figure of $7 billion per year for 2010. Even at Reuter’s lower estimate level, the profits remain quite substantial and are certainly enough to spur on the intense violence Mexican drug traffickers have exhibited in recent years (Kilmer et al., 2010).
12The Northern Triangle countries of Central America—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — have been deeply affected. The intense drug-related violence presents serious challenges to governance (UNODC, 2010c: 26).
13From 2009 to 2010, the area under cultivation increased in Peru by 2%. In terms of hectares, the estimates for 2010 are 61,200. Cultivation has varied in Peru based on region. Some smaller regions located in the Amazon Basin saw dramatic increases, as much as 90%, in terms of the area under cultivation. It is important to note that cocaine production in Peru has been increasing ever since 2005, according the UN Report. On the hand, Colombia saw a decrease in production in 2010; the 2010 estimate for production is 350 mt. For more information, see UNODC (2011: 101). Between 2000 and 2009 coca cultivation increased by 38% and 112% in Peru and Bolivia, respectively(UNODC, 2010c: 65). Coca cultivation is, in short, returning to countries where eradication policies damaged the reputation of the US and US drug control policies and incentivized peasant unrest (Gootenberg, 2008: 315).
14In 2008 Colombia produced 450 mt of cocaine, out of a UN estimated 865 mt worldwide production. US government estimates of total cocaine production were higher, ranging up to 1000 mt. Regarding cultivation, there was a decrease in hectares cultivated from around 80,000 to 68,000 in 2008-2009 in Colombia according to the UNODC, World Drug Report (2010c: 66). Estimates of cocaine production per hectare of cultivated coca are quite unreliable.
15For a discussion in historical perspective of the difficulties of quantifying cocaine production, see Gootenberg (2008: 325-336); for a discussion of the difficulties with the UNODC estimates, see Francisco E. Thoumi (2010); Francisco E. Thoumi and Ernestine Jensema (2004).
16UNODC (2010a). “If the current trend continues, Peru will soon overtake Colombia as the world’s biggest coca producer—a notorious status that it has not had since the mid-1990s”, said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa. Coca cultivation in Peru increased 6.8% in 2009— from 56,100 hectares in 2008 to 59,900. Cultivation of coca in Colombia, however, decreased in 2009 by 16%—from 81,000 hectares in 2008 to 68,000 hectares in 2009. Despite Colombia’s apparent decline, overall coca cultivation in the Andean region decreased only 5.2% in 2009. According to the UNODC data, cultivation of coca in Bolivia barely changed between 2008 and 2009, increasing only by 400 hectares (about 1% — from 30,500 hectares in 2008 to 30,900 in 2009). This UNODC report contradicted the US estimate for Bolivia, which showed a 9.4% increase in cultivation between 2008 and 2009 (and a 2009 cultivation estimate that is 4,100 hectares higher
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than the UNODC’s estimate). See Just the Facts. A Civilian’s Guide to US Defense and Security Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean, June 23, 2010, http://justf.org
17This displacement is also confirmed by the fact that Mexican criminal organizations have increased their activities in the US. By 2008 these organizations had presence in 230 US cities while three years before they were present in only 100 cities. Moreover, the Colombian groups now controlled the illicit cocaine and heroin distribution in only 40 cities, mostly in the north-east (UNODC, 2010c: 79).
18On Calderon’s military strategy and the Mérida Initiative, see Rafael Velázquez Flores and Juan Pablo Prado Lallande (2009), Raul Benitez Manaut (2010), David A. Shirk (2011).
19Between 2006 and 2008, over half the maritime shipments of cocaine to Europe detected came from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Ecuador has also been affected by an increase in transit trafficking, and both countries are experiencing increasing problems with violence (UNODC, 2010c: 30).
20In Bolivia, coca growing peasants joi relatively peaceful (Gootenberg, 2008: 313).
21In Peru, the eradication policy caused discontent and rejection among the peasants and favored the growth of the Shining Path. Thus, the guerrillas took control of particular areas, forcing local authorities to resign and flee while the guerrilla leadership demanded payments for processing and transporting the drug. Intense eradication actions without economic alternatives made people join the guerrillas (Valderrama and Cabieses, 2004: 60-61).
22This collapse of Colombia’s two major cartels opened the way for new actors to assume expanded roles in the drug industry, particularly paramilitary and guerrilla organizations that use the illegal drugs to fund their activities (Thoumi, 2004: 76).
23 Luis Astorga Almanza (2007), Luis Astorga Almanza and David A. Shirk (2010). From 1995 onward several Mexican cartels became progressively more involved in cocaine traffic out of Colombia. The Tijuana and Juarez cartels started to fight for control of cocaine smuggling routes across Mexico and cross-border plazas into the United States in the vacuum left by the collapse of the major Colombian cartels. Only after 2000, however, did Mexico experience the rise and participation of newer cartels such as Sinaloa, the Gulf, and the Zetas (Bagley and Hernández, 2010: 332-333).
24See http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_17627581; also George W. Grayson (2009); Hal Brands (2009).
25On March 11, 2011, Honduran officials reported that they had for the first time dismantled a cocaine lab that belonged to the Zetas. This highlights the changing location activities of Zetas due to the pressure they are feeling elsewhere (Stratfor, 2010a).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Archibald, Randall C., and Damien Cave (2011), “Drug wars push deeper into Central America”, The New York Times, March 2.
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NOTES
1. The ex-presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, César Gaviria, and Ernesto Zedillo respectively, highlight the necessity that the United States and Europe should “design and implement policies leading to an effective reduction in their levels of drug consumption and, as a consequence, in the overall scope of the narcotics criminal activities (Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, 2008: 7). 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 2. UNODC (2011: 87). Note that the 5 million users of cocaine in the US are between the ages of 15and64. 2. 2. 2. 2. 2. 2. 2. 3. Cocaine demand has been decreasing steadily in the US since 1982, from an estimated 10.5 million users in 1982 to some 5.3 in 2008. Cocaine users in the 27 European Union countries have, however, more than doubled in the past decade, increasing from 2 million in 1998 to 4.1 million in 2008 (4.5 million in all of Europe). UNODC, (2010c: 16); also UNODC (2010b: v-vi and 82); the
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consumption of cocaine has decreased in the US to 1.9% in 2009 to 2.5% in 2006. This information came from the UNDOC (2011: 93). 3. 4. Despite overall declines total area of coca leaf cultivation in the Andes, cocaine production remained essentially stable from the mid-1990s through 2008 at approximately 800-1,100 mt. North America, including Canada, accounted for some 40% of world-wide cocaine consumption. The EU and the EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries consumed more than 25% of the world total. Together, these two regions accounted for more than 80% of the global cocaine market, estimated at US$ 88 billion in 2008 (UNODC, 2010b: 82). In 2008, the total value of worldwide cocaine and heroin markets combined was estimated at $US 153 billion (UNODC, 2010c: 19). These statistics are from the UNODC, World Drug Report (2011: 119). 4. 5. Some 4.3-4.75 million people have used cocaine in Europe as of 2009 (UNODC, 2011: 86). 5. 6. South America was the third largest consumer market for cocaine in the world in 2008 with some 2.4 million users. The bulk of South American consumption was concentrated in two countries of the Southern Cone, although there was evidence of rising cocaine use in virtually every country in the hemisphere. Given its population of nearly 200 million, Brazil had the largest number of users at roughly 1 million. But use was most intense in Argentina, where an estimated 2.6% of the adult population used cocaine in 2006 — a statistic roughly similar to that of the United States (UNODC,2010b: 82). 6. 7. After the Peru-Colombia “air bridge” that transported paste or base from Peru’s Alto Huallaga to Colombia by small airplanes was disrupted by Peruvian President’s Fujimori’s adoption of a shoot-down policy in 1993-94, the subsequent termination of the cocaine flights out of Peru during the Fujimori dictatorship in the mid-late 1990s, and the launching of Plan Dignidad in 1998 (with US Government funding) by the newly-installed Banzer government in Bolivia, the epicenter of illegal coca cultivation shifted from Eastern Peru and Bolivia to southeastern Colombia. Gootenberg (2008: 291-324); Clawson and Lee III (1998: 16-21); Francisco E. Thoumi (2003: 7 and passim). 7. 8. By September 1996, after allegations that the Cali Cartel financed Ernesto Samper’s presidential campaign had surfaced in 1994, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers and other major the Cali cartel leaders had been imprisoned in Colombia. See Maria Clemencia Ramirez Lemus, Kimberly Stanton and John Walsh (2005); also Camilo Chaparro (2005: 125-148). Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón y Antonio Sánchez (2007: 169-173). 8. 9. On the paramilitary demobilization, see Elvira María Restrepo and Bruce Bagley (2011). The Uribe Government emphasized a counterinsurgency strategy in Plan Colombia, an important difference from the Pastrana government’s original “Plan Marshall”. During 2002-2003 Uribe increased the number of combat troops and pursued constitutional reforms to expand the military activities (Ramírez Lemus, Stanton and John Walsh, 2005: 111-112). 9. 10. The 62,000 ha and 73,000 ha includes in the calculation small fields (UNODC, 2011: 100-111; Isacson, 2010). 11. Bagley (2011: 31). The US government estimates that the Mexican cartels make $19 to 39 billion annually from the drug trade. Drug policy analyst Dr. Peter Reuter estimates Mexican cartel drug profits at the much lower figure of $7 billion per year for 2010. Even at Reuter’s lower estimate level, the profits remain quite substantial and are certainly enough to spur on the intense violence Mexican drug traffickers have exhibited in recent years (Kilmer et al., 2010).
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12. The Northern Triangle countries of Central America—Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador —have been deeply affected. The intense drug-related violence presents serious challenges to governance (UNODC, 2010c: 26). 13. From 2009 to 2010, the area under cultivation increased in Peru by 2%. In terms of hectares, the estimates for 2010 are 61,200. Cultivation has varied in Peru based on region. Some smaller regions located in the Amazon Basin saw dramatic increases, as much as 90%, in terms of the area under cultivation. It is important to note that cocaine production in Peru has been increasing ever since 2005, according the UN Report. On the hand, Colombia saw a decrease in production in 2010; the 2010 estimate for production is 350 mt. For more information, see UNODC (2011: 101). Between 2000 and 2009 coca cultivation increased by 38% and 112% in Peru and Bolivia, respectively(UNODC, 2010c: 65). Coca cultivation is, in short, returning to countries where eradication policies damaged the reputation of the US and US drug control policies and incentivized peasant unrest (Gootenberg, 2008: 315). 14. In 2008 Colombia produced 450 mt of cocaine, out of a UN estimated 865 mt worldwide production. US government estimates of total cocaine production were higher, ranging up to 1000 mt. Regarding cultivation, there was a decrease in hectares cultivated from around 80,000 to 68,000 in 2008-2009 in Colombia according to the UNODC, World Drug Report (2010c: 66). Estimates of cocaine production per hectare of cultivated coca are quite unreliable. 15. For a discussion in historical perspective of the difficulties of quantifying cocaine production, see Gootenberg (2008: 325-336); for a discussion of the difficulties with the UNODC estimates, see Francisco E. Thoumi (2010); Francisco E. Thoumi and Ernestine Jensema (2004). 16. UNODC (2010a). “If the current trend continues, Peru will soon overtake Colombia as the world’s biggest coca producer—a notorious status that it has not had since the mid-1990s”, said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa. Coca cultivation in Peru increased 6.8% in 2009— from 56,100 hectares in 2008 to 59,900. Cultivation of coca in Colombia, however, decreased in 2009 by 16%—from 81,000 hectares in 2008 to 68,000 hectares in 2009. Despite Colombia’s apparent decline, overall coca cultivation in the Andean region decreased only 5.2% in 2009. According to the UNODC data, cultivation of coca in Bolivia barely changed between 2008 and 2009, increasing only by 400 hectares (about 1% — from 30,500 hectares in 2008 to 30,900 in 2009). This UNODC report contradicted the US estimate for Bolivia, which showed a 9.4% increase in cultivation between 2008 and 2009 (and a 2009 cultivation estimate that is 4,100 hectares higher than the UNODC’s estimate). See Just the Facts. A Civilian’s Guide to US Defense and Security Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean, June 23, 2010, http://justf.org 17. This displacement is also confirmed by the fact that Mexican criminal organizations have increased their activities in the US. By 2008 these organizations had presence in 230 US cities while three years before they were present in only 100 cities. Moreover, the Colombian groups now controlled the illicit cocaine and heroin distribution in only 40 cities, mostly in the north- east (UNODC, 2010c: 79). 18. On Calderon’s military strategy and the Mérida Initiative, see Rafael Velázquez Flores and Juan Pablo Prado Lallande (2009), Raul Benitez Manaut (2010), David A. Shirk (2011). 19. Between 2006 and 2008, over half the maritime shipments of cocaine to Europe detected came from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Ecuador has also been affected by an increase in transit trafficking, and both countries are experiencing increasing problems with violence (UNODC, 2010c: 30). 20. In Bolivia, coca growing peasants joi relatively peaceful (Gootenberg, 2008: 313). 21. In Peru, the eradication policy caused discontent and rejection among the peasants and favored the growth of the Shining Path. Thus, the guerrillas took control of particular areas, forcing local authorities to resign and flee while the guerrilla leadership demanded payments for processing and transporting the drug. Intense eradication actions without economic alternatives made people join the guerrillas (Valderrama and Cabieses, 2004: 60-61).
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22. This collapse of Colombia’s two major cartels opened the way for new actors to assume expanded roles in the drug industry, particularly paramilitary and guerrilla organizations that use the illegal drugs to fund their activities (Thoumi, 2004: 76). 23. Luis Astorga Almanza (2007), Luis Astorga Almanza and David A. Shirk (2010). From 1995 onward several Mexican cartels became progressively more involved in cocaine traffic out of Colombia. The Tijuana and Juarez cartels started to fight for control of cocaine smuggling routes across Mexico and cross-border plazas into the United States in the vacuum left by the collapse of the major Colombian cartels. Only after 2000, however, did Mexico experience the rise and participation of newer cartels such as Sinaloa, the Gulf, and the Zetas (Bagley and Hernández, 2010: 332-333). 24. See http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_17627581; also George W. Grayson (2009); Hal Brands (2009). 25. On March 11, 2011, Honduran officials reported that they had for the first time dismantled a cocaine lab that belonged to the Zetas. This highlights the changing location activities of Zetas due to the pressure they are feeling elsewhere (Stratfor, 2010a).
ABSTRACTS
This article analyses the evolution of illegal drug economy in the Americas over the past two decades. It identifies eight key trends that have characterized illicit drug trafficking and organized crime as of mid-2011. They are: (1) the increasing globalization of drug consumption; (2) the limited victories and unintended consequences of the U.S.-led ‘War on Drugs’; (3) the proliferation of cultivation areas and of drug smuggling routes; (4) the dispersion and fragmentation of organized criminal groups; (5) the failure of political reform and state-building efforts; (6) the inadequacies U.S. domestic drug and crime control policies; (7) the ineffectiveness of regional and international drug control policies; (8) the growing support for legalization debate.
Este artigo analisa a evolução da economia ilegal de drogas nas Américas ao longo das últimas duas décadas. Identifica oito tendências principais que caracterizaram o tráfico ilícito de drogas e o crime organizado a partir de meados de 2011. São estas: (1) a crescente liberalização do consumo de drogas; (2) as vitórias limitadas e as consequências não intencionais da “guerra às drogas” liderada pelos Estados Unidos; (3) a proliferação de áreas de cultivo e de rotas de tráfico de droga; (4) a dispersão e fragmentação dos grupos criminosos organizados; (5) o fracasso da reforma política e dos esforços de construção do Estado; (6) a insuficiência das políticas domésticas dos EUA de controlo da droga e da criminalidade; (7) a ineficácia das políticas regionais e internacionais de controlo das drogas; (8) o crescente apoio ao debate sobre a legalização.
Cet article analyse l’évolution de l’économie illégale de la drogue sur le continent américain au long des vingt dernières années. Il distingue huit tendances principales qui caractérisent le trafic de drogue et le crime organisé à partir du milieu de l’année 2011, à savoir: (1) la libéralisation croissante de la consommation de drogue; (2) les victoires limitées et les conséquences indésirables de la guerre contre la drogue menée par les États-Unis; (3) la prolifération de zones de culture et de routes de trafic de la drogue; (4) la dispersion et l’éclatement des groupes
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criminels organisés; (5) l’échec de la réforme politique et des efforts de construction de l’État; (6) l’insuffisance des politiques internes des États-Unis de contrôle de la drogue et de la criminalité; (7) l’inefficacité des politiques régionales et internationales de contrôle de la drogue; (8) le soutien croissant au débat sur la légalisation.
Este artículo analiza la evolución de la economía ilegal de drogas nas Américas a lo largo de las dos últimas décadas. Identifica ocho tendencias principales que caracterizaron el tráfico ilícito de drogas y el crimen organizado desde mediados de 2011. Son éstas: (1) la creciente liberalización del consumo de drogas; (2) las victorias limitadas y las consecuencias no intencionadas de la “guerra contra las drogas” liderada por los Estados Unidos; (3) la proliferación de áreas de cultivo y de rutas de tráfico de drogas; (4) la dispersión y fragmentación de los grupos criminales organizados; (5) el fracaso de la reforma política y de los esfuerzos de construcción del Estado; (6) la insuficiencia de las políticas internas de los EUA en relción al control de la droga y de la criminalidad; (7) la ineficacia de las políticas regionales e internacionales de control de las drogas; (8) el creciente apoyo al debate sobre la legalización.
INDEX
Mots-clés: trafic de drogue, crime organisé, Amérique latine, guerre contre la drogue Palavras-chave: tráfico de droga, crime organizado, América Latina, guerra contra as drogas Palabras claves: tráfico de droga, crimen organizado, América Latina, guerra contra las drogas Keywords: drug trafficking, organized crime, Latin America, war on drugs
AUTHOR
BRUCE BAGLEY
Professor of International Studies and Chair of the Department of International Studies at the University of Miami. E-mail: [email protected]
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Violence, organized crime, and illicit drug markets: a Canadian case study Violência, crime organizado e mercados de drogas ilícitas: um estudo de caso canadiano Violence, crime organisé et marchés des drogues illicites : une étude de cas canadienne Violencia, crimen organizado y mercados de drogas ilícitas: un estudio de caso canadiense
Stephen Schneider
Introduction
1 Violence has been cited as one of the defining characteristics of organized crime (OC). In a review of the definitions of OC provided by 17 different scholars and other writers, Albanese found that 12 had included “the use of force or threat” in the definition (Albanese, 2005: 9). In his textbook on organized crime, Abadinsky (2007: 4) lists the “willingness to use violence” as a fundamental trait of organized crime. As such, violence is a “readily available and routinely accepted resource” for criminal organizations. The Commission of the European Communities and Europol (2001: 42) identify 11 fundamental traits of a criminal organization, including “Using violence or other means suitable for intimidation” as well as “Using some form of discipline and control” (which is often exercised through violence and the threat of violence). In its 1986 report, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1986: 28) states,
2 Violence and the threat of violence are an integral part of the criminal group. Both are used as a means to control and protection against both members of the group who violate their commitment and those outside the group to protect it and maximize its power. Members are expected to commit, condone, or authorize violent acts.
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3 Violence is also “commonly viewed as one of the defining features of illicit markets that differentiate them from licit markets” (Andreas and Wallman, 2009b: 225). Lethal and sublethal violence appears to be particularly endemic to illegal drug trafficking and illicit drug markets. Whether this is true, or simply based on perceptions generated from the saturated reporting of drug-related violence by the media, government reports and scholarly research, Reuter (2009: 276) acknowledges that many illicit markets, and some drug markets in particular “are clearly very violent; many participants are at risk of being killed or seriously wounded by others in the same business, either as buyers or sellers, and there are shootings of innocent bystanders”. According to Lum (2008: 179), “Street-level drug activity and violence are two of the most pervasive crime-related social problems that plague large urban cities in the United States today… Additionally, a popular view exists among both law enforcement and citizens that connects drug activity to violence as well as to general notions of danger.”
4 Evidence of the use of violence in the context of organized crime and illicit markets is borne out through the tens of thousands of murders of organized criminal offenders and the numerous violent conflicts that are fought between competing criminal entities around the world every year. In its 2011 World Drug Report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime claims the world is “witnessing more and more acts of violence, conflicts and terrorist activities fuelled by drug trafficking and organized crime” (UNODC, 2011: 8). The epidemic of violence that currently engulfs Mexico has, at least symptomatically, been linked to the drug trade (Ríos and Shirk, 2011). In Latin America, according to the same United Nations report, “more than 25 per cent of homicides are related to organized crime and the activities of criminal gangs” and this violence has had a political and social destabilizing effect, not only on Mexico but other countries in the Americas (UNODC, 2011: 10-11).
5 Homicides and other forms of violence stemming from organized crime and illicit markets have emerged as a significant criminal justice issue in Canada in recent years. The frequency of lethal and sub-lethal violence at the hands of organized criminal offenders appears to have increased during a period where the national crime rate, violent crime rate, and homicide rate has precipitously declined. Data on gang- and OC- related homicides have been collected from police agencies on a national level in Canada since 1991, which is around the same time that the country’s murder rate began to drop. According to the police-reported data, between 1991 and 2008 the rate of gang- and OC-related homicides has increased. While there were only 13 homicides classified as gang- or OC-related in 1993, in 2008 there were 138 such murders reported by police. In 2010, there were 94 homicides that police considered to be gang- or OC-related, which accounted for 17% of all homicides in Canada. Like the homicide rate overall, there was a decline in the rate of gang- and OC-related homicides between 2009 and 2010. While the 2010 rate is lower than the peak of 2008, homicides relating to gangs and organized crime were still much higher in 2010 compared to when the data was first collected in the early 1990s (Hotton Mahony, 2011: 8-9).
6 Despite the significance of OC-related homicides worldwide and the correlation between OC, illicit markets, and violence there is surprisingly little scholarly attention paid to this issue (Geis, 1966; Andreas and Wallman, 2009a). Even the leading textbooks on OC (Abadinsky, 2012; Lyman and Potter, 2011) pay scant attention to violence, which
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is curious given the comparatively more in-depth coverage of other organized crime “tactics” (i.e., corruption and money laundering).
7 There is a small body of theoretical literature on violence in illicit markets (Geis, 1966; Black, 1976; Dintino and Martens, 1981; Lattimore et al., 1997; Miron, 1999; Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000; Ousey and Lee, 2004; Reuter, 2009; Andreas and Wallman, 2009b; Friman, 2009), although there is a paucity of research that empirically tests these theories through case studies. Empirical research examining violence in illicit drug markets has disproportionately been dedicated to crack cocaine in the US during the late 1980s and early 1990s (Fagan and Chin, 1990; Blumstein, 1995; Venkatesh, 1996; Ousey and Lee, 2004). Considerable attention has also been paid to the issue of violence related to gangs in the US (Moore, 1990; Klein, Maxson and Cunningham, 1991; Decker and Van Winkle, 1994; 1996; Decker, 1996; Venkatesh, 1996; Howell and Decker, 1999; Decker and Curry, 2002). Youth and street gangs, however, are conceptually and qualitatively different from criminal organizations (despite some overlap) and the theories and research applied to the former are not always applicable to the latter.
8 The dearth of literature on violence relating to organized crime and illicit markets in Canada is particularly pronounced. Much of the coverage has come from journalistic accounts and while there is at least one book dedicated to “mafia murders” in Canada (Edwards and Nicaso, 1993), most of the publications discusses violence only within a broader context of organized crime and are primarily descriptive (Charbonneau, 1976; Dubro, 1985; 1992; Lavigne, 1999; Sher and Marsden, 2003; Schneider, 2009; Cedilot and Noël, 2011). Few, if any, studies have been published that apply theories of violence in illicit markets to Canadian cases.
9 In short, there is a need to examine in more depth the nature, scope, causes, and impact of violence in the context of organized crime and illicit markets, in both theoretical and empirical terms. This analysis can contribute, not only to a greater understanding of violence relating to OC and illicit markets, but can benefit the literature on lethal and sub-lethal criminal violence generally. More rigorous and extensive research and theorizing may also have considerable public policy implications in efforts to prevent and control violence stemming from organized crime and illicit markets.
10 The goal of this article is to make a modest contribution to the literature on violence relating to organized crime and illicit markets by summarizing selective theories on the situational causes of violence in illicit markets through a review of the extant literature. These theories will then be applied to a particular case in Canada, with a view to better understanding the sources of violence in this case study and to test and refine the theories.
11 The case study to be examined is considered one of the worst periodic outbreaks of violence related to organized crime and illicit markets in Canadian history: the so- called “biker war” that was fought between the Hell’s Angels and its rivals over dominance in Quebec’s lucrative wholesale cocaine market between the years 1994 and 2001. More than 150 murders were linked to this conflict, including the death of innocent bystanders and criminal justice officials.
12 The inter-related theories used to help locate the source of violence in this conflict are twofold: (i) illegal markets that are unstable are more prone to violence as a means to resolve conflict compared to more stable illicit markets where conflict is prevented or controlled through other non-violent means (Lattimore et al., 1997; Miron, 1999;
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Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000; Ousey and Lee, 2004; Friman, 2009; Reuter, 2009) and (ii) instability in illegal markets generally result from conflict between competing criminal entities, and, as such, there is a higher risk of violence in illicit markets characterized by numerous entrepreneurial or free-lance enterprises, especially when these enterprises work outside the market’s norms, informal social controls, and established roles, responsibilities and hierarchies (Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000).
Theoretical framework
13 The degree of stability in an illicit market has been conceptualized as a significant variable to explain the scope of violence in illicit markets. According to Dintino and Martens (1981: 30), “we might deduce that stable marketplaces enjoy less violence and tend to attract individuals who employ ‘conventional,’ ‘accepted’ methods to resolve conflict. Conversely, an unstable marketplace relies to a greater extent upon violence as a means of resolving conflict, and consequently attracts those who are most likely to resort to physical sanctions.” A formidable challenge in developing theories and conducting research that explore the causal relationship between market stability and the extent of violence is conceptualizing what is a stable market and what is an unstable market.
14 Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt (2000) propose a conceptual framework for understanding drug market stability as a means to help explain violence. To begin with, they assert the need to view this stability/instability hypothesis in complex terms: in particular, they argue that “any definition of drug market stability must consider both structural and interactional measures”. The authors build upon the work of Lattimore et al. (1997) who emphasize the importance of interaction (i.e., competition) and downplay structure (i.e., specific market types) in determining the level of stability in an illicit drug market. However, as Brownstein, Crimmins, and Spunt (2000: 869) argue, “the problem is not one of focus, but rather one of integration. That is, to study systemic drug-related violence in the context of drug market stability, it is better to combine measures of both interaction and structure than to emphasize one or the other.”
15 The difference between the structural and interactional aspects of drug market stability is that the former “emphasizes form and organization” while the latter “emphasizes social relationships” (id., ibid.: 875). Focusing mostly on social interactions, which they define as an “active and meaningful relationship between two or more people”, the authors conceptualize stable illegal drug markets “as those that have dealing operations adhering to a business model of organization and emphasizing social interactions that occur within the market, such as those between sellers and buyers or dealers and workers”. They view unstable markets “as those that have dealing operations run by freelance entrepreneurs who commonly relate to others with whom they are in competition for customers and for the resources of the market” (ibid.: 885-886). In other words, stable drug markets are characterized by market participants who focus on their main internal functions (marketing, buying, selling) while unstable markets are characterized by participants who are more focused on their competition and increasing their market share.
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16 Moreover, stable illegal drug markets adhere to the “business model”; that is, market participants are more businesslike in their operations. Transactions “are conducted according to established routines and relationships, territorial lines are clearly drawn, and order is maintained through a hierarchy of authority”. In unstable drug markets, especially those in their infancy, “lines of authority and territory are not clearly drawn, and the roles of dealers and buyers are not well established. Given the lack of established order and the uncertainty of working relationships, markets organized in this way are likely to be less stable. This form of market organization is what is called the ‘free-lance model’” (ibid.: 871).
17 In short, emphasizing the convergence between structural and interactional determinants, stable illegal drug markets are (i) structurally characterized by manufacturing, distribution, and trade that is “organized around socially controlled relationships between producers and distributors, employers and employees, and merchants and consumers” and (ii) are “more likely to be oriented toward interactions within established businesses, with dealers, workers, and customers involved largely in transactions with one another for the purpose of doing business”. In contrast, less stable markets are (i) structurally “more likely to involve entrepreneurial or free-lance enterprises, with business operators, workers and customers operating outside of both the law and the social controls of any established drug business hierarchies” while (ii) “they are more likely to be oriented toward interactions external to individual established businesses, with dealers competing with one another over access to customers and resources” (ibid.: 876).
18 To substantiate their conceptual model, Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt cite the violence that characterized the crack cocaine markets in American cities during the 1980s. They argue that “the level of violent crime in particular cities increased as crack markets emerged in those cities, and then it decreased as the local market became more stable”. As such, “violence was a less likely outcome when a local drug market was populated by buyers and sellers with standardized and established roles and relationships” (ibid.: 869). In these stable, organized drug markets, social relations were “ordered by role specialization and hierarchy” and there was more likely to be present “considerable interaction internal to established businesses. That is, relations would mostly involve customary exchanges between dealers and their workers or sellers and their customers in the course of routine commercial transactions” (ibid.: 875-876). In contrast, violence was at the highest level when the crack cocaine markets were unstable, which entailed “considerable interaction external to individual businesses. That is, different suppliers, distributors, and entrepreneurs would regularly interact in competition with each other in an environment where market shares are still available and market order has yet to be established” (ibid.: 875).
19 In sum, these authors conclude that “systemic drug-related violence is more likely to be found in drug markets that are unstable” (ibid.: 886). These unstable markets are often emergent and characterized by what economists call “pure competition”. In such illicit markets, producers or sellers are more pre-occupied with their competitors and gaining (or retaining) market share, which then contributes to instability and hence introduces a greater risk of violence as a means to regulate the conflict that emerges from this competition. In contrast, illicit markets characterized by an oligopolistic or monopolistic environment may be more stable due to less competition (and hence fewer disputes). In the context of illegal drug markets, Lattimore et al. (1997: 72) write:
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“Many interpret stability to mean the presence or absence of market competition that promotes conflict among drug dealers.” Friman (2009: 287) agrees, viewing unstable illegal markets as highly competitive and, as such, more prone to violence. In particular, he writes:
20 … the use of violence between drug organizations is more likely during disputes over the control of lucrative distribution networks and market share. Once markets are consolidated in the hands of organized networks, however, the levels of large-scale violence tend to decrease. A subsequent erosion of consolidation — due to factors including shifting power balances within or between contending organizations, the impact of state enforcement efforts, and the erosion of accommodations due to market saturation or broader economic pressures — can unleash new waves of consolidation efforts and associated violence.
21 As emphasized throughout the extant literature, much of the conflict that has arisen between crime groups has been the results of competition over a particular territory and/or a share of an illicit market (Geis, 1966; Black, 1976; Dintino and Martens, 1981; Miron, 1999; Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000; Ousey and Lee, 2004; Andreas and Wallman, 2009b; Friman, 2009; Reuter, 2009). As such, the level of competition is one variable used to measure the stability of, and hence the level of conflict and violence in, an illicit market.
22 The implication is that once a particular criminal group has achieved a monopoly (or participates in a network or a cartel arrangement with other market participants), there is greater market stability and hence less violence. Reuter (2009) argues that because violence is generally used less internally within criminal organizations (compared to the more frequent use of externally-oriented violence among competing entities), a large criminal group that monopolizes a particular market or territory will engender relatively less violence compared to “atomistic” markets characterized by a number of competing groups. “Thus the violence in atomistic markets has a narrower set of sources (competition and transactions) than that in markets serviced by larger selling organizations (which also include disciplinary and successional acts). Transactions within an organization rather than between independent agents may have lower probability of generating violence because they are part of longer-term relationships, which, through development of trust, allow for other modes of resolution.” (Reuter, 2009: 277)
Case study: the Quebec biker war of the 1990s
23 The Canadian case study used to test the afore-mentioned theories is the so-called “biker war” that was fought between the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club and its rivals — in particular the Rock Machine — over dominance in Quebec’s wholesale cocaine market. This section will briefly describe, in chronological order, some of the pertinent violent milestones that took place during this conflict. An analysis of the sources of this conflict, as viewed through the lens of the previously discussed theories, will follow.
24 The first salvo in the war is believed to have been launched by the Rock Machine when, on July 13, 1994, Pierre Daoust was fatally shot at the Harley-Davidson repair shop he owned in a Montreal suburb. Daoust was linked to a Hell’s Angels’ affiliate club, the Death Riders. The next day police arrested five members of the Rock Machine in Montreal as they were preparing for an attack on the Evil Ones, another outlaw biker
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club affiliated with the Hell’s Angels. During the arrest, police seized three radio- detonated bombs, twelve pounds of dynamite, and a silencer-equipped pistol (Montreal Gazette, November 8, 1995; Lavigne, 1999: 19).
25 On October 19 of the same year, a cocaine trafficker named Maurice Lavoie was murdered as he was getting out of his car at home. Lavoie had recently begun buying cocaine from the Hell’s Angels, which infuriated his long time suppliers, the Pelletier brothers, who wholesaled cocaine to street dealers in Montreal. Police viewed Lavoie’s murder as a warning from the Pelletiers to their other retail dealers. A little more than a week later, Sylvain Pelletier was killed when a bomb planted in his jeep exploded. Pelletier had allegedly been marked for execution by the Hell’s Angels in retaliation for the death of Lavoie and for his refusal to be absorbed by the motorcycle gang’s cocaine distribution network. The death of a free-lance cocaine wholesaler like Pelletier escalated the nascent conflict to another level (Lavigne, 1999: 20). By the end of 1994, at least seven other men were killed, all of whom were members or associates of the Rock Machine.
26 The second half of 1995 would be a pivotal period in the biker war. Although it was long from over, a single violent act would spark public outrage when, on August 9, 1995, the war claimed its first innocent victim. A remote-controlled bomb believed to planted by the Hell’s Angels in a car parked across from a school in Montreal was detonated, critically wounding 11-year old Daniel Desrochers. He died a few days later.
27 On September 15 of that year, Richard (Crow) Émond was shot dead in the parking of a Montreal shopping centre. Émond had recently become president of the Trois Rivières chapter of the Hell’s Angels in Quebec. Later that night, three men were killed when a bomb they were attempting to plant outside the clubhouse of the Jokers, a biker club controlled by Émond, exploded prematurely. By the end of November 1995, four more deaths were attributed to the biker war. Among those victims was Michel Boyer, an associate of the Rock Machine who was caught by police a year earlier with dynamite that was to be used to kill Maurice (Mom) Boucher, a full patch member of the Quebec Hell’s Angels and the head of its most powerful chapter: The Nomads (RCMP, 2002, 7; Montreal Gazette, September 22, 1995).
28 By 1996, the war expanded from Montreal to Quebec City when the Rock Machine chapter in that city joined forces with the Roberge brothers, an independent drug trafficking group, to wage what the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) called “a ferocious struggle with the Hell’s Angels for control of bars and drinking establishments involved in the distribution and sale of drugs” (CISC, 1997: 13). The surge of violence in Quebec City began that year with the January death of Hell’s Angels’ associate Glenn Cormier. In March, a Rock Machine-affiliated drug dealer named Roland Lebrasseur was murdered by a member of the Rockers, a puppet club of the Hell’s Angels’ Nomads chapter (Montreal Gazette, May 22, 2002; Sher and Marsden, 2003: 64). In July, the rivals traded two more deaths of low-level drug dealers. In October, two senior members of the Montreal chapter of the Rock Machine were gunned down in a Chinese restaurant in Verdun, a borough of Montreal. In December, Bruno Van Lerberghe, a member of the Quebec City Hell’s Angels chapter was murdered when a gunman walked into a restaurant and fired six shots at him (Canadian Press, December 23, 1996). Before the end of the year, police attributed the murders of three more men to the biker war.
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29 For Criminal Intelligence Service Canada analyst Jean-Pierre Levesque, 1997 proved to be “the year outlaw bikers went from waging a turf war to a total war” (Canadian Press, December 17, 1997). At least 28 more deaths were attributed to the biker war, which meant by year’s end, the conflict had claimed at least 86 lives since it began. In addition, there were “71 attempted murders, 81 bombings, and 93 cases of arson against gang-related businesses and bars, for a total of 313 violent incidents” since the conflict began (CISC, 1998, 13). One high profile murder victim in 1997 was Scott Steinert, a member of the Montreal Hell’s Angels chapter who was bludgeoned to death on November 4. Steinert supervised a team that was responsible for manufacturing and planting bombs and participated in the assassination of rivals. His bodyguard Donald Magnusen was killed at the same time (Montreal Gazette, June 7, 1997; April 24, 1999). While police logically deduced the two were killed by the enemies of the Hell’s Angels, information provided to police by an informant working inside the Hell’s Angels indicated that both had in fact been purged by their own club. Steinert’s violent ouster was because he was blamed for the bomb that killed Daniel Desrochers, and, along with Magnusen, was becoming too undisciplined (Cherry, 2005: 90-93; Sher and Marsden, 2003: 62 63).
30 On February 20, 1998, Rock Machine member Denis Belleau was murdered at a restaurant in Quebec City. The killing was the third attack stemming from the violent conflict in the region over the past ten days (Canadian Press, February 21, 1998). A week later, a charred, fingerless corpse was discovered in a wooded area in Quebecs’ Eastern townships, but it wasn’t until a month later that the deceased was identified as André Tousignant, a prospect with the Hell’s Angels Nomads chapter. Tousignant was killed on the orders of Maurice Boucher, the president of the Nomads chapter, who was worried that he was a Crown witness (Sher and Marsden, 2003: 141). Over the remainder of 1998, at least 20 more people were murdered as part of the war, most of who were allied with the Rock Machine.
31 Among the murders attributed to the conflict in 1999 were Richard Relative, the brother-in-law of Salvatore and Giovanni Cazzetta, founders of the Rock Machine, and Tony Plescio, another Rock Machine member, who was shot six times outside a McDonald’s restaurant after dropping his children off for a party (Montreal Gazette, July 24, 1999; Cherry, 2005: 133-134).
32 In 2000, more than 30 people with suspected ties to either side of the conflict were murdered, including 11 Hell’s Angels associates. In addition, on April 17, Norman Hamel, a full patch member of the Hell’s Angels and one of the founders of the Nomads, was killed with two gun shots while being chased through a parking lot in Laval, a suburb of Montreal (Globe and Mail, July 24, 2000). By the end of 2000, while sporadic violence continued, the worst of the conflict appeared to be over. On September 26, Maurice Boucher, along with other senior members of the Quebec Hell’s Angels, met with the new Rock Machine leader Frédéric Faucher and three of his lieutenants to negotiate a truce. While it is conceivable that the two sides were anxious to end the bloodshed — especially the Rock Machine, which was losing the battle of attrition — speculation mounted that the leaders of the two sides were under tremendous pressure by Vito Rizzuto, the head of Montreal’s mafia family, to negotiate a truce because the war had brought too much attention and disruption to the city’s criminal underworld. On October 8, at a restaurant in downtown Montreal, Boucher and Faucher announced
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that a ceasefire had been reached (Globe and Mail, October 10, 2000; Canadian Press, October 10, 2000).
33 In addition to this tenuous armistice, other developments intervened to help put an end to the bloodshed. The first was the arrest of Maurice Boucher on murder charges. The second was a massive police operation launched against the Hell’s Angels in Quebec that culminated on March 28, 2001, when more than 2,000 police officers raided the clubhouses, homes, and businesses of the Hell’s Angels and its affiliates in the province. Dubbed Operation Springtime, it involved 288 police searches in 27 locations and targeted for arrest 142 individuals, including 80 of Quebec’s 106 full-patch Hell’s Angels members, the entire Nomad chapter, as well as every member in the Hell’s Angels affiliate clubs, the Rockers and the Evil Ones. In the end, 42 members of the Hell’s Angels (including all the Nomads) and the Rockers were each charged with 13 counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, various drug trafficking offences, and a new offence of participating in a criminal organization (RCMP, 2002; Sher and Marsden, 2003: 255; Cherry, 2005).
34 Perhaps the most fitting symbol of the war’s end occurred on May 6, 2002, when Maurice Boucher was found guilty of first degree murder in the death of two prison guards and was sentenced to life imprisonment, with no chance of parole for at least 25 years. A year earlier, on May 11, 2001, Frédéric Faucher pleaded guilty to 28 criminal charges and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. As part of his plea agreement, Faucher admitted to being involved in seven bombings that killed two rival gang members between 1996 and 1997 (Montreal Gazette, December 7, 2000; March 3, 2001; May 1, 2001; National Post, May 12, 2001).
35 By June of 2004, the majority of the Hell’s Angels charged as part of Operation Springtime was found guilty. Most were convicted of or pleaded guilty to charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy to murder, and participation in a criminal organization. At least eight members of the Nomads ended up serving sentences of 20 years or more in addition to the life sentence imposed on their leader, Maurice Boucher.
Discussion
36 Relying on the “unstable market” theory to pinpoint the origins of violence in this or any case study is precarious due to the inherent challenges in determining the extent to which an illegal market is stable, let alone establishing the sources of market instability. In addition, there is the related difficulty of rigorously collecting empirical data that can reliably measure the level of stability in an illicit market. These methodological and analytical challenges arise from the secretive nature of illegal underground markets and the lack of reliable quantitative or qualitative data that can be collected from particular case studies, including the case studied here.
37 Notwithstanding these caveats, the starting point when analyzing the issue of drug market stability is to employ both structural and interactional measures (in an integrative fashion). For Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt (2000) unstable illicit markets are characterized by two over-arching traits: (i) “structurally, less-stable markets are more likely to involve entrepreneurial or free-lance enterprises, with business operators, workers and customers operating outside of both the law and the social controls of any established drug business hierarchies” and (ii) these enterprises “are more likely to be oriented toward interactions external to individual established
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businesses, with dealers competing with one another over access to customers and resources” (id., ibid.: 876). Unstable markets that are characterized by these traits tend to be in their infancy.
38 Applying this theoretical framework to the case study, it can be argued that the Quebec cocaine market was characterized by some semblance of instability immediately before and during the conflict. This instability, however, did not emanate from the lack of maturity of Quebec’s wholesale cocaine market; cocaine had been imported and distributed in the province since at least the turn of the century (Schneider, 2009). The importation and distribution of cocaine in the province began to dramatically escalate in the 1970s and was sustained throughout the 1980s and early 1990s (Charbonneau, 1976; Appleton and Clarke, 1990; de Champlain, 1990; Edwards, 1991; RCMP, 1991; Lafrenière and Spicer, 2002; Schneider, 2009).
39 In addition, the instability did not derive from pure market competition among numerous free-lance operators. This argument can be made for at least two intersecting reasons. First, the wholesale cocaine market in Montreal during the 1980s and early 1990s was more of an oligopoly dominated by four main criminal groups. Second, during this period the free lance cocaine wholesalers and retailers operated in a relative peaceful coexistence in the province. Violence was minimized in the Quebec cocaine market in the 1980s and early 1990s because it was, to use the terminology of Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt (2000: 869, 875), a stable, organized drug market “populated by buyers and sellers with standardized and established roles and relationships” wherein these social relations were “ordered by role specialization and hierarchy”.
40 Specifically, Quebec’s wholesale cocaine industry just prior to the eruption of violence in the mid-1990s was not characterized by pure competition made up of numerous free lance suppliers, but more resembled an oligopoly made up of four major players who dominated both importing and high-level wholesaling functions. These four entities were the Hell’s Angels, the West End Gang, the Rizzuto “mafia” family, and the Colombian cocaine “cartels” (the Medellin cartel in the 1980s and the Cali cartel in the early 1990s). While cocaine importing and wholesaling in Quebec was controlled by three of the most powerful (transnational) organized crime genres that existed in North America (outlaw motorcycle gangs, La Cosa Nostra and the Colombian cartels) during the 1990s, Montreal’s West End gang may have been the single largest importer of cocaine in the province (Sher and Marsden, 2003; Cherry, 2005; Schneider, 2009). The West End Gang prospered among these well-established and powerful transnational criminal groups for at least three reasons: (1) it had a “role specialization” in that it focused primarily on importing drugs (cocaine and hashish), which was made possible through the influence it had at the Port of Montreal where a number of corrupt dock workers and supervisors were on its payroll and (2) as an importer, the West End Gang counted as some of its key customer the Hell’s Angels and the Rizzuto crime family (although both also coordinated large shipments of cocaine and hashish into Canada).
41 What may have helped to limit violence in Quebec’s wholesale cocaine market in the 1980s and early 1990s was a level of cooperation, coordination and peaceful coexistence between these four groups. The Hell’s Angels were customers of both the Colombian cartels in the 1980s and the West End Gang in the 1990s; the West End Gang and the Rizzuto crime group purchased cocaine directly from Colombian cartels, while Maurice Boucher collaborated with the Rizzuto family to import cocaine into Canada (Edwards,
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1991; Lavigne, 1999; Sher and Marsden, 2003; Cherry, 2005; Lamothe and Humphreys, 2006; Schneider, 2009). The groups also co-existed peacefully because the West End Gang and the Colombian cocaine cartels largely focused on importing drugs, leaving mid-level wholesaling (in Montreal) to the Hell’s Angels and the Rizzuto mafia group. There is also evidence suggesting that the Hell’s Angels and the Italian mafia divided up Montreal’s cocaine market between themselves and even negotiated what the price of a kilo would sell for in the city (Cherry, 2005: 105, 153; Sher and Marsden, 2003: 227).
42 The limited conflict between these powerful groups can be explained by other factors, including a common aura of respect for and deference to Vito Rizzuto, the head of the Italian mafia group in Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s, who was viewed as the most powerful criminal offender in Quebec (and all of Canada). Rizzuto has been depicted as a major force in forging cooperation and peaceful relations among these four criminal groups as well as between these groups and independent cocaine wholesalers and retailers (Cherry, 2005; Schneider, 2009; Lamothe and Humphreys, 2006).
43 In addition to this oligopoly of cocaine importers and wholesalers, there were a number of other independent cocaine wholesalers in Montreal and throughout Quebec, many of whom were already purchasing drugs from these four dominant groups, while others imported and wholesaled autonomously. However, the level of conflict and violence in the cocaine markets in Montreal and throughout Quebec was generally low in the 1980s and 1990s. This was because both wholesalers and retailers (including the owners of bars in Montreal where cocaine was sold) were free to buy and sell cocaine on the open market. As Lavigne (1999: 23) states, “Montreal gangs have traditionally shared the lucrative drug market”. This laissé faire environment and the tolerance for independent wholesalers was a deliberate way to keep the peace in Montreal’s illicit markets, a defining hallmark of Vito Rizzuto’s leadership.
44 In sum, key assumptions underlying the theories on violence in illicit markets cannot be applied unequivocally to this case study. First, to argue that the violent biker war in Quebec resulted from the instability of the wholesale cocaine market in the early 1990s, which in turn was due to conditions of pure competition or extensive free-lancing would be inaccurate. Despite the existence of free lance wholesalers and retailers, the cocaine market in Quebec was characterized by a hierarchy and at the top was an oligopoly of four dominant groups, which operated as a cartel due to the level of cooperation and price-fixing that existed between them. In other words, the Quebec cocaine market in the 1980s and early 1990s was a stable, organized drug market due to a well established and respected hierarchy that was controlled by a cartel arrangement of four dominant groups. Not only did these powerful groups co-exist peacefully, but they also maintained a semblance of peace in a relatively open drug market by reinforcing social relations through this hierarchy and through established relationships and role specialization among drug importers, wholesalers, and retailers. As such, cocaine wholesalers and retailers did not, generally speaking, operate outside of the social controls established through this hierarchy and the market was characterized by “considerable interaction internal to established businesses” (i.e., “customary exchanges between dealers and their workers or sellers and their customers in the course of routine commercial transactions”) (Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000: 875-876).
45 The relative market stability and peaceful coexistence was irreparably disrupted when the Hell’s Angels began a drive in the mid-1990s to consolidate all high-level cocaine
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wholesaling in Montreal and, ultimately, throughout Quebec. The specific factors that contributed to the instability of the wholesale cocaine market and the violence that ensued can be categorized as such: (i) the Hell’s Angels’ drive to monopolize all cocaine wholesaling and establish overall hegemony in Quebec’s criminal underworld, which is backed by its long-standing penchant for monopolies in illicit markets and its use of violence (in part to support territorially-based monopolies), (ii) the introduction of certain dominant personalities in leadership capacities in the Hell’s Angels that exacerbated the monopolistic and violent tendencies of the group, and (iii) the entry and/or aggressive expansion of free lance wholesalers and retailers that directly challenged the Hell’s Angels’ market share and its quest for hegemonic control over Quebec’s cocaine market.
46 These three factors coalesced to create considerable instability and conflict in Quebec’s cocaine market. The Hell’s Angels — and especially its leader in Quebec, Maurice Boucher — was the prime source of this instability through its expansionist policies and its disruption of the established hierarchy and relatively peaceful social relations, which resulted from its efforts to put an end to the open cocaine market where independent wholesalers and retailers were free to purchase and sell cocaine. Their attempts at consolidating cocaine wholesaling in Montreal were particularly unsettling in that they undermined standardized roles and relationships (the independence and economic livelihood of free lance wholesalers and retailers). As such, the environment in the cocaine market went from peaceful coexistence (characterized by “considerable interaction internal to established businesses”) to conflict and externally-oriented violence (“considerable interaction external to individual businesses”) (id., ibid.: 875, 876). The sources of conflict and violence were not intrinsic to an environment of pure competition involving many free lance entrepreneurs. Instead, it appears to have stemmed from the oligopoly that the Hell’s Angels were successful in establishing in Montreal’s cocaine market and the complete monopoly towards which they were ultimately striving.
Conclusion
47 Much of the violence in the Quebec biker war resulted from conflict over competition in the wholesale distribution of cocaine in that province, and Montreal in particular. But it was also a battle over whether a particular criminal group (the Hell’s Angels) would exercise a monopoly in that illegal market and, by extension, the efforts by free lance wholesalers and retailers to remain independent.
48 The theory that violence stems from instability within an illicit market is applicable to this case study. Much of the instability in Montreal’s wholesale cocaine market at the time stemmed from the oligopoly that the Hell’s Angels maintained in Montreal and its aggressive goal of establishing an outright monopoly. Prior to the Maurice Boucher’s drive to monopolize the cocaine market in that city, it was relatively stable and free from excessive violence because, according to the theoretical model of Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt (2000: 871), Montreal’s cocaine market was populated by buyers and sellers with standardized and established roles and relationships, transactions were conducted according to these established roles, routines and relationships, territorial lines were clearly drawn, and order was maintained through a hierarchy of authority. At the top of this hierarchy of authority in Montreal’s wholesale cocaine
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market were the Hell’s Angels and the Italian Mafia, and the established roles, routines, and relationships were characterized by a tolerance for independent wholesalers in Montreal, as long as they did not encroach on the territories or customers of the Hell’s Angels or the Italian mafia clan.
49 Conversely, according to Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt (2000: 871), in unstable drug markets “lines of authority and territory are not clearly drawn, and the roles of dealers and buyers are not well established”. This argument can also be applied to the more dangerous and volatile environment created by the aggressive monopolistic drive of the Hell’s Angels in Montreal as they attempted to impose new, more strict lines of authority, re-draw territorial boundaries (to favour themselves), and create new roles and relationships among the Hell’s Angels and independent cocaine wholesalers and retailers in the city and the province.
50 The aspect of this theory that cannot be applied to this case study is the argument that the conditions of instability in illicit drug markets result from an environment of pure competition whereby “different suppliers, distributors, and entrepreneurs would regularly interact in competition with each other in an environment where market shares are still available and market order has yet to be established” (Brownstein, Crimmins and Spunt, 2000: 869). Notwithstanding the authority of the Hell’s Angels and the Italian mafia in Montreal’s cocaine wholesale market during the 1980s and early 1990s, the market appeared to be more stable when there was greater competition among a number of freelance wholesalers. During the Hell’s Angels’ monopolistic drive, and even after they achieved hegemony in Montreal’s cocaine market, instability and violence persisted, due to the unrelenting aggressive expansion of the Hell’s Angels, its determination to eliminate or co-opt competitors and independent market wholesalers, and the resistance to this monopoly by the Hell’s Angels’ galvanized enemies.
51 This conclusion echoes the argument that violent conflict in illicit markets ensues as organized criminal groups endeavour to monopolize market share or a particular geographic territory. As Abadinsky (2007: 4) writes: “An OC group eschews competition. It strives for hegemony over a particular geographic area (a metropolitan area or section of a city) a particular ‘industry’, legitimate or illegitimate (for example gambling, trucking, loansharking), or a combination of both (for example, loansharking in a particular area or the wholesale cocaine market in a city).” These groups try to gain and maintain monopolies through violence, the threat of violence, or by corrupt relationships with government, businesses, or union officials.
52 Thus, based on this case study, it can be argued that illicit markets characterized by oligopolistic or monopolistic conditions may experience conflict and violence because these conditions inhibit the type of pure competition that is more natural for illicit drug markets due to the relative ease of entry of participants (wholesalers and retailers) into such markets (Smith, 1975; Reuter, 1983: 185).
53 This case study also highlights the significant influence that dominant individual actors in illicit markets can play in fostering instability, conflict and violence. Just like in wars and other international conflicts that are singularly attributed to powerful individuals who seek dominance (e.g., Hitler, Napoleon, etc.), conflicts in illicit markets driven by a desire for hegemony can be attributed to powerful individual actors (in this case, Maurice Boucher). The role that hegemonic quests by organized criminal entities play in causing instability and violence in illicit markets may be supported by another Montreal-based case study: during the 1970s, the Dubois Brothers were behind a similar
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attempt to monopolize the city’s illicit drug markets, and this was also accompanied by a significant level of violence (Schneider, 2009: 270 274).
54 In sum, the sources of the Quebec biker war can be viewed through the broad theoretical framework that locates the sources of violence in conflicts among competing participants in unstable illicit markets. Yet, this theoretical framework must be flexible enough to recognize that instability, conflict, and violence does not exclusively emanate from pure competition, but may also result from oligopolistic and even monopolistic conditions (especially when these conditions limit the organically competitive nature of illicit markets). This conclusion, however, is limited to this one case study. More empirical research, involving other case studies, is needed to explore the causal relationship between competitive conditions in illicit markets and the scope of violence in such markets and, more specifically, the type of market conditions that pose the greatest risk to stability and amity in illicit markets: pure competition, oligopoly or monopoly.
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ABSTRACTS
This article tests two inter-related theories on the situational causes of violence in illicit drug markets: (i) drug markets that are unstable are more prone to violence and (ii) there is a higher risk of instability, and hence conflict and violence, in drug markets characterized by pure competition. These theories are applied to the violence that occurred between the Hell’s Angels and its rivals over dominance in Quebec’s lucrative cocaine market during the 1990s. The theory that violence stems from instability in an illicit market is applicable to this case study. However, Quebec’s cocaine market was characterized by oligopolistic conditions and the ensuing violence stemmed from the Hell’s Angels’ efforts to maintain hegemony in that market. This paper argues that oligopolistic and monopolistic conditions in illicit drug markets may heighten the risk of conflict and violence because such conditions inhibit competition.
Este artigo testa duas teorias inter-relacionadas sobre as causas situacionais de violência nos mercados de drogas ilícitas: (i) os mercados de drogas que são instáveis são mais propensos à violência e (ii) existe um maior risco de instabilidade e, portanto, de conflito e violência, em
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mercados de drogas caracterizados por pura concorrência. Estas teorias aplicam-se à violência que ocorreu entre os Hell’s Angels e os seus rivais pela posição dominante no mercado lucrativo de cocaína no Quebec durante a década de 1990. A teoria de que a violência decorre da instabilidade num mercado ilícito é aplicável a este estudo de caso. No entanto, o mercado de cocaína no Quebec foi caracterizado por condições oligopolísticas e a violência que se seguiu resultou dos esforços dos Hell’s Angels para manterem a hegemonia no mercado. Este artigo argumenta que as condições de oligopólio e monopólio em mercados de drogas ilícitas podem aumentar o risco de conflito e violência, porque inibem a concorrência.
Cet article teste deux théories liées entre elles concernant les causes situationnelles de la violence sur les marchés des drogues illicites : (i) les marchés des drogues qui sont instables sont plus enclins à la violence, (ii) il y a un plus grand risque d’instabilité et, par conséquent, de conflit et de violence, sur les marchés des drogues caractérisés par la pure concurrence. Ces théories sont appliquées à la violence qui s’est produite entre les Hell’s Angels et leurs rivaux pour occuper une position dominante sur le marché lucratif de la cocaïne au Québec dans les années 1990. La théorie selon laquelle la violence découle de l’instabilité sur un marché illicite est applicable à cette étude de cas. Cependant, le marché de la cocaïne au Québec était caractérisé par des conditions oligopolistiques et la violence qui a suivi était le fruit des efforts des Hell’s Angels pour maintenir l’hégémonie sur le marché. Cet article soutient que les conditions oligopolistiques et monopolistiques sur les marchés des drogues illicites peuvent accroître le risque de conflit et de violence, car ces conditions freinent la concurrence.
Este artículo prueba dos teorías inter-relacionadas sobre las causas situacionales de violencia en los mercados de drogas ilícitas: (i) los mercados de drogas que son inestables son más propensos a la violencia y (ii) existe un mayor riesgo de instabilidad, y, por lo tanto, de conflicto y violencia, en mercados de drogas caracterizados por pura competencia. Estas teorías se aplican a la violencia que ocurrió entre los Hell’s Angels y sus rivales por la posición dominante en el mercado lucrativo de cocaína en Quebec durante la década de 1990. La teoría de que la violencia resulta de la instabilidad en un mercado ilícito es aplicable a este estudio de caso. Sin embargo, el mercado de cocaína en Quebec fue caracterizado por condiciones oligopolistas y la violencia consecuente de los esfuerzos de los Hell’s Angels para mantener la hegemonía en el mercado. Este artículo argumenta que las condiciones oligopolistas y monopolistas en mercados de drogas ilícitas pueden aumentar el riesgo de conflicto y violencia, porque tales condiciones inhiben la competencia.
INDEX
Mots-clés: crime organisé, marchés illicites, violence Palavras-chave: crime organizado, mercados ilícitos, violência Palabras claves: crimen organizado, mercados ilícitos, violencia Keywords: organized crime, illicit markets, violence
AUTHOR
STEPHEN SCHNEIDER
Professor at Department of Sociology and Criminology, Saint Mary’s University. E-mail: [email protected]
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