King’s College London Global Institutes King’s Brazil Institute ‘Over, under and through the walls’: The dynamics of public security, police-community relations and the limits of managerialism in crime control in Recife, Brazil Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Brazilian Studies 2017 First supervisor: Prof Anthony Pereira Second supervisor: Dr Jeff Garmany Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti Table of Contents Table of tables and figures ............................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 6 Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 7 Key words ...................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 – Introduction ........................................................................................... 8 1.1 Homicide and violence at the margins ................................................................. 9 1.2 Security .............................................................................................................. 12 1.3 Contribution to criminology and Brazilian public security studies ................... 17 1.4 Outline of the chapters ....................................................................................... 20 CHAPTER 2 – The Background .................................................................................. 23 2.1 Context ............................................................................................................... 24 2.2 Violence and marginalisation ............................................................................ 30 2.3 Violence, crime and poverty nexus: mistaken theories ..................................... 32 2.4 The adaptation of criminological theories from the Global North .................... 35 The genesis and theoretical rationale of PPV ...................................................... 36 2.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 42 CHAPTER 3 – The criminological study of public security in Brazil ........................ 44 3.1 Brazil’s internal knowledge production inequalities ......................................... 45 3.2 State building and the monopoly of violence .................................................... 46 Gender .................................................................................................................. 47 Youth .................................................................................................................... 49 3.3 Absence of the State? ......................................................................................... 50 3.4 Some reflections on democracy and security ..................................................... 53 3.5 Issues of public security ..................................................................................... 56 3.6 The dynamics of public security as object of study ........................................... 59 3.7 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 65 2 Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti CHAPTER 4 – Methodology ....................................................................................... 67 4.1 Research design ................................................................................................. 69 4.2 Interviews ........................................................................................................... 71 4.3 Focus groups ...................................................................................................... 72 4.4 Participant observation ....................................................................................... 73 4.5 Ethnographic methods and a feminist approach ................................................ 75 4.6 The politics of representation ............................................................................. 78 4.7 Case study research and neighbourhood cases .................................................. 82 4.8 Final methodological remarks ............................................................................ 86 CHAPTER 5 – Police reform ...................................................................................... 88 5.1 Overview of public security reforms ................................................................. 90 5.2 The views of state actors: alleged achievements and challenges ....................... 94 5.3 The limits of current modes of control and of the discourse of success .......... 101 5.4 Hyper-incarceration ......................................................................................... 110 5.5 Zero tolerance .................................................................................................. 120 5.6 Prioritising managerial reforms over the training and structure of the police . 123 5.7 Theoretical implications and conclusions ........................................................ 125 CHAPTER 6 – Institutional self-critique ................................................................... 128 6.1 Blaming the poor: crack, social class and violence ......................................... 129 6.2 Silencing the poor? .......................................................................................... 136 6.3 Ethnic, gender and class discrimination ........................................................... 138 6.4 Rolling out policing ......................................................................................... 143 6.5 Soldiers ............................................................................................................ 145 6.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 151 CHAPTER 7 – Public perceptions of crime, safety and policing: The case study communities ............................................................................................................... 153 7.1 Demographics .................................................................................................. 154 3 Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti 7.2 Tourinho: distant and brutal policing ............................................................... 157 7.3 Vitoria: workers vs. criminals .......................................................................... 168 7.4 Gender inequalities .......................................................................................... 178 7.5 Age ................................................................................................................... 183 7.6 Public reflections on policing: discrimination, mistrust and criminalisation .. 186 7.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 189 CHAPTER 8 – Democratising public security interventions .................................... 191 8.1 The manipulation of quantitative data ............................................................. 192 8.2 Death squads .................................................................................................... 195 8.3 Civil society and police oversight .................................................................... 199 8.4 Lack of, excess or inappropriate state involvement? Building state presence through public security interventions ..................................................................... 206 8.5 Democratic public security? ............................................................................ 210 8.6 Demilitarisation: can it be achieved? ............................................................... 219 8.7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 222 CHAPTER 9 – Conclusions ....................................................................................... 223 9.1 Inequalities in knowledge production .............................................................. 224 9.2 Public security in debate .................................................................................. 226 9.3 Summary of findings ........................................................................................ 228 9.4 Key contributions: youth and safety in Recife ................................................. 232 9.5 Policy recommendations .................................................................................. 237 9.6 Critical reflections on this study and further research ..................................... 239 REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 243 NOTES ....................................................................................................................... 266 4 Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti Table of tables and figures Table 1: Household income per capita by section of the population ....................................... 26 Table 2: Population of Brazil’s metropolitan regions. .............................................................. 28 Table 3: Largest Brazilian metropolitan regions. ..................................................................... 28 Figure 2: Map of informal settlements in RMR. 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