CRIME & GLOBALISATION DEBATE PAPERS MARCH 2010 The Impact of Militia Actions on Public Security Policies in Rio de Janeiro TRANSNATIONAL INSTITUTE TNI Briefing Series Crime & Globalisation, March 2010 1 The Impact of Militia Actions on Public Security Policies in Rio de Janeiro AUTHORS: Contents Paulo Jorge Ribeiro Rosane Oliveira • Introduction: Human 3 Insecurity and Markets TRANSLATION: of Violence Alexandra de Vries • The impact of Militia 6 EDITOR: Tom Blickman actions on public security policies in Rio de Janeiro DESIGN: Guido Jelsma Box: The Justice League 7 PRINTING: • Methodology 7 Drukkerij PrimaveraQuint Amsterdam Map: Areas under control of 8 FINANCIAL SUPPORT: militias Ministry of Foreign Affairs (The Netherlands) • Defining the issues 9 CONTACT: • Militias, market of violence 11 Transnational Institute and local power De Wittenstraat 25 1052 AK Amsterdam • Changes in perspective: 13 The Netherlands Tel: -31-20-6626608 from denial to acceptance Fax: -31-20-6757176 of the militias [email protected] www.tni.org/crime • Visiting Gotham City 16 • Final Considerations 20 Contents of this booklet may be quoted or reproduced,provided that the source of • Recommendations 22 information is acknowledged. TNI would like to receive a copy of the document in which this booklet is used or Box: Main PCI recommen- 23 quoted. dations You may stay informed of TNI publica- • Notes 24 tions and activities by subscribing to TNI’s bi-weekly e-mail newsletter. Send your • Bibliography 27 request to [email protected] or register at www.tni.org • Addendum: Impressions 29 Amsterdam, December 2009 of a strange phenomenon ISSN 1871-3408 2 Crime & Globalisation, March 2010 Introduction: Human Insecurity and Markets of Violence Introduction: Human Insecurity and Markets of Violence By Tom Blickman the world’s population, or 3.3 billion people, now live in urban areas. Within the next two This briefing written by Paulo Jorge Ribeiro and decades that will increase to 60 percent. 2007 Rosane Oliveira explores an apparently recent saw the number of slum dwellers in the world phenomenon in the recurrent episodes of cross the one billion mark. One in every three extreme urban violence in Rio de Janeiro: the city residents live in inadequate housing with rise of militias – well-organised private vigi- no or few basic services. About 41 per cent of lante groups made up of rogue, dismissed or the combined urban populations of all devel- retired police officers, firemen and prison oping regions live in slums, while 78 per cent guards. The briefing shows that while the role of the urban population in least developed of private militias has only recently made head- countries are slum dwellers; well over one fifth lines in the newspapers, it is part of a problem of humanity. The number of slum dwellers is of urban insecurity that has much deeper and projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2020 and if no historical roots. Based on research taken in firm and concrete action is taken, it may reach difficult and often dangerous conditions, the 2 billion by 2030, according to UN Habitat.2 study describes a worrying scenario in infor- The international community recognised the mal urban settlements that may be particular urgent need to address the situation when – to the city of Rio, but also represent develop- as one of the Millennium Development Goals ments in urban security that spread far beyond (MDGs) – it agreed to “achieve significant im- Brazil’s self-proclaimed “wonderful city”. provement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.”3 Globally, many communities in insecure and informal urban settlements are confronted Some slums are less visible or more inte- with serious challenges to human security due grated into the urban fabric as cities develop to the absence of the rule of law, state security and as the incomes of slum dwellers improve. protection and governance in such settings. Others become permanent features of urban This is particularly true of developing countries landscapes. Slums in many cities are no longer where little resources are available for a secure just marginalised neighbourhoods housing a environment and where insecurity of tenure relatively small proportion of the urban popu- and precarious economic opportunities related lation; in many cities, they are the dominant to informal sector activities are widespread. type of human settlement. There also has been In sharp contrast to mature democratic wel- a trend toward “informalisation” of the urban fare states that provide security, regulation and economy, with an increasing share of incomes litigation of conflicts on the basis of laws, prob- earned in unregulated employment. In Latin ably half of the world population live in fragile America and the Caribbean, seven out of ten informal spheres without access to legal pro- new jobs in urban areas are created in the in- tection.1 The ensuing economical and material formal sector. insecurity force many inhabitants of those ar- eas to ‘migrate into illegality’ as a means of sur- According to the UN Habitat report The Chal- vival; into the unregulated informal economy lenge of Slums, the urban poor are trapped in and sometimes into the criminal one as well. an informal and ‘illegal’ world – “in slums that Since 2008, for the first time in history, half of are not reflected on maps, where waste is not Crime & Globalisation, March 2010 3 The Impact of Militia Actions on Public Security Policies in Rio de Janeiro collected, where taxes are not paid and where justice institutions. However, according to UN public services are not provided. Slum dwell- Habitat, corruption and ineffective practices, ers mostly exist outside of the law. If they come inflexibility of response to changing criminal into contact with government at all, they are circumstances along with limited resources and more likely to be hindered in their attempts to skills seriously undermine the performance of provide the fundamentals of life – shelter and these institutions. “The problem of corruption livelihood – rather than helped. They live in a in criminal justice systems and in the police is state of permanent insecurity and illegality and a particularly corrosive one in terms of public business crooks and gangsters move into these confidence, since the public at large relies on ungoverned vacuums.”4 Threats to the safety these agencies to do their traditional jobs of ap- and security of urban residents pose a huge prehending and sentencing criminals.” 7 challenge to both city and national govern- ments. The Executive Director of the United In many unruly megacities, the state often Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UN- cannot provide law and order and satisfy ba- ODC), Antonio Maria Costa, identified secu- sic security needs and is superseded by a rity and the rule of law as the missing targets wide range of alternative illegitimate security for achieving the MDGs.5 arrangements, creating a power and gover- nance vacuum. The state monopoly on the Security needs have shifted over the past legitimate use of force is eroded and “markets decades. “During the 1960s and 1970s, the of violence” or “markets of force” – the most greatest fear among slum dwellers in some Lat- radical form of privatisation of security – in American cities, especially those in squatter emerge as a mode of security regulation.8 With settlements or favelas, was of eviction either by the absence of the rule of law, security protec- government or private landowners,” accord- tion and governance, security ceases to be a ing the UN Habitat report. “Today, this has public good and transforms into a private com- been replaced by fear of violence and crime, modity. The social contract between state and including shootings related to drug trafficking. citizen, expressed by the payment of taxes and While more globally representative empirical the protection implied in an effective mono- evidence on the linkages between crime and poly of the legitimate use of force, is seriously slums is needed, some recent analyses … sug- weakened. gest that slum dwellers are not a threat to the larger city, but are themselves victims of urban In this vacuum, violent entrepreneurs con- crime and related violence. Slum dwellers are, trolling certain territories impose alternative in fact, more vulnerable to violence and crime security arrangements using arbitrary and ran- by virtue of the exclusion of slums from pre- dom violence. Security turns into an expensive ventive public programmes and processes, in- commodity for the already poor. The “market cluding policing.”6 of violence” arises from the complex social, economic, political and institutional processes Violence, crime and social exclusion, the latter that make violence a prevalent means of resol- increasingly taking forms of social apartheid, ving conflict and power in informal settle- are the negative side-effects associated with ments. This leads to a “culture of violence” rapid urbanisation. Security issues are often resulting in endemic fear and insecurity or neglected in the urban environment where the “societies of fear”, which in turn often lead to rule of law is supposed to exist and left to the forms of violence and popular justice that are existing formal law enforcement and criminal rationalised as being defensive in nature. This 4 Crime & Globalisation, March 2010 Introduction: Human Insecurity and Markets of Violence vicious circle of violence offers ample oppor- have been established, it will be very difficult tunities to entrepreneurs to enter the “market to eliminate them, as the example of the Mafia, of force” and operate with impunity. These un- the ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra in southern conventional suppliers of security can be regu- Italy shows. These criminal organisations de- lar enterprises or informal, illegal or criminal veloped a century and half ago under condi- actors, including criminal gangs and vigilante tions of non-governance and the absence of the groups with sophisticated forms of mobilisa- state monopoly of force, and through a process tion and organisation.