Urban violence and police privatization in Brazil Blended invisibility.doc

urban violence and police privatization in brazil: blended invisibilitysocial justice, summer 2000by martha k. huggins at the turn of the second millennium, visible state-sponsored atrocities in brazil may seem to be only a pale reflection of the ethnic and political cleansing and other large-scale, often genocidal, violence in places such as guatemala, east timor, rwanda, the sudan, bosnia, kosovo, and chechnya. the extent and scope of violence in these countries - with its raw brutality, military context, and state and overt paramilitary state-sponsored murder and mistreatment of civilians - make contemporary peacetime violence in brazil, or even during its 21-year military dictatorship (1964 to 1985), appear to be much less noteworthy and significant. yet, that assumption suggests the questionable moral thesis that smaller numbers or a lower percentage of victims out of the total brazilian population reduce the significance of this and similar situations of state-permitted or encouraged violence. whether defensible or not, the validity of such a proposition cannot be considered without examining the extent and nature of violence in brazil, where interpersonal violence is prevalent and dramati c, although disguised because it is ethnically and class selective as well as geographically focused.to indicate the extent of violence in brazil, in sao paulo alone (the largest city in south america), between 1984 and 1996 there were 69,700 homicides - over 10,000 more deaths than known u.s. casualties during the entire vietnam war. between 1979 and 1997, the homicide rate in brazil increased from 11.5 murders per one hundred thousand population to 25.4. this 18-year period spans the six years before the military left power through the 12 years after formal democratic government had returned. between 1979 and 1997, brazils population increased 65%, but its homicide rate went up 120% (folha, 1999b: 3-1). in contrast to brazils 1997 homicide rate of 25.4, the corresponding u.s. homicide rate was 10.1 per 100,000 population (internet: www.iabd.org), which then steeply declined in 1998 to 6.3 (internet: /bjs.homicide/hmrt.htm). by the 1990s, brazils homicide rate approached that of countries recently riven by militarized internal conflict. in the 1990s, brazil had the fifth highest murder rate in the world, following guatemala, el salvador, colombia, and jamaica (buvinic et al., 1999), with the latter also a country under nonmilitary but militarized social control.selective violencealthough brazils countrywide homicide rate 2 is already high by most international comparisons, the homicide rates in some of its districts and for some population sectors are equal to or even higher than latin american countries still involved in internal guerrilla and military conflict. for example, colombia - formally democratic, yet in a militarized drug and guerrilla war with large regions of the country under military, paramilitary, or guerrilla control - had a homicide rate in the early 1990s of 89.5 murders per 100,000 population (ibid.), clearly higher than brazils 1997 countrywide rate of 25.4 (nev, 2000). yet the overall homicide rate was lower than the 1998 rates for sao paulo citys diadema district (140), where the auto industry has been downsizing amid slums and poverty, and the citys poor embu district (97.32) (folha, 1999b: 3-3). colombias rate was also lower than the cities of recife (105) in brazils impoverished northeast, and vitoria (103), in espirito santo state east of rio (ne v, 2000). indeed, diademas homicide rate is closer today to guatemalas and el salvadors national murder rates (150) in the late 1980s (buvinic et al., 1999), when those countries were experiencing intense internal guerrilla and counterinsurgency conflict.brazils pattern of urban violence is clearly most dramatic for selected regions and segments of the population. in 1997, the countrys two largest cities, rio de janeiro and sao paulo, ranked third and fourth after recife and vitoria, with 65.8 and 56.7 murders per 100,000 population respectively (nev, 2000). however within brazils cities with high homicide rates, murders are highest in the poorest areas. for example, in 1997 rios working-class to very poor belford roxo district had 73 murders per 100,000 population, over 10% higher than the citys rate. in 1998, sao paulos diadema district had 140 murders per 100,000 population, and embu s homicide rate was 97.3; homicide rates in both neighborhoods were much higher than the citys overall rate of 56.7 (folha, 1999c: 3-9). in sao paulos morumbi neighborhood, its poverty-stricken residents are 18 times more likely to be murdered than their fellow citizens in the more prosperous and less sharply stratified jardim paulista district (estado, 1997: c-4). c learly, homicide rates in each poor urban neighborhood are markedly higher than in the better-off neighborhoods, and higher than sao paulo citys gross homicide rates and brazilian national murder rates.furthermore, not every brazilian - even in these violence-prone cities and districts - is equally likely to be murdered. among the victims of violence in brazil, poor black males are most vulnerable. this racial pattern holds in the united states as well, with blacks six times more likely than whites to be murdered (internet: /homicide/race.htm). in brazil, within the racial concentration of homicides, youth - mostly male - between the ages of 15 and 24 are seven times more likely to be murdered than all other male or female age groups combined. it is especially risky to be a young male 3 in brazilian cities such as vitoria, where youth murder rates are 169.5 per 100,000 population - over 500% higher than for the brazilian population as a whole (folha, 1998c: 3-3). in recife, youth murder rates are 207.7, compared to the citys overall rate of 105.3. in rio, youth homicide rates are 190.2, and in sao paulo, 155.5; each citys youth homicide rate is almost 200% above its citys overall rates (ibid.). by contrast, the 1997 u.s. homicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds was 22.6 per 100,000 population (internet: www.cdc.gov). 4 even states with the highest u.s. youth homicide rates - illinois (50.8), nevada (44.3), louisiana (42.4), and maryland (36.5) (internet: :80/bjs/pub/pdf/tjv97up.pdf) - had less than half the youth murder rates of brazilian cities and states with the highest homicide rates.social controlcomplementing the hypothesis that brazils high murder rates are rendered invisible because murder victims come primarily from already marginalized sectors of the brazilian population is the hypothesis that the status of most agents of murder helps to mask such violence. to analyze violence in economically developing (or even in developed) countries with formally democratic institutions, one must recognize that limiting such a study to the official, statutory social control system of police, courts, and laws captures some while missing much of what makes up a countrys repressive control system. in brazil, for example, public urban social control involves not one formal system, but two seemingly contradictory institutional processes. on the one hand are centralization and militarization of professionalized policing, and, on the other, privatization and decentralization of repressive social control. while one part of the social control system has become more centrally controlled and militarily organized - - exemplifying what davis (1992: 244-257) calls the robocop phenomenon - another part has become increasingly commodified into a free market of social control services for controlling an image of the problem population. each process helps in a distinct way to mask the states role in repression.considering the high levels of violence in brazil, what is the role of the formal agents of social control? looking at violence by on-duty brazilian police, 5 police specialist paul chevigny (1996) maintains that well into its redemocratizing period latin americas largest formal democracy, brazil, had one of the worst records of urban police violence in the americas. in 1992, in the greater metropolitan area of sao paulo alone, police killed 1,470 civilians - almost four times more than the total number of such killings during an entire span of 15 years in brazils 21-year military dictatorship (reuters, 1997). although on-duty police violence declined in 1993 to just under 300 police killings of citizens annually, in sao paulos metropolitan area, the incidence increased to 430 in 1998 and to 498 in 1999. in rio, homicides roughly doubled between 1997 and 1998, with 430 citizens killed by police in 1998 - almost 38 murders a month. since rios population is less than half the size of sao paulos, rios rate of police deadly force was at least twice sao paulos (cano, 1997: 19). 6let us compare citizen killings by brazilian police with similar incidences in two large u.s. cities, los angeles and new york city, where police have recently been implicated in excess violence and corruption. in los angeles, the average annual number of police killings of citizens between 1985 and 1989 was 25, while in new york city, the annual average for that period was 23 (new york times, 2000: b-1; kocieniewski, 1998: b-1). between 1989 and 1992 in washington, d.c., police killings of citizens ranged between four (1989) and seven annually (1990 and 1992), increasing to 16 in 1995, and then decreasing abruptly to six in 1996 (leen et al., 1998: a-1). 7 in 1996 in new york city, police killed 31 citizens, decreasing to 19 in 1998 and to 11 in 1999 (new york times, 2000: b-1). given the average annual rate at which washington, d.c., and new york city police kill citizens, 8 it would take approximately 50 years for washington and 25 years for new york to kill as many citizens as sao paulo police murder ed just in 1999. the rio police annually kill almost as many citizens as all u.s. police forces do combined, although rios population is five and one-half million and the u.s. population is over 250 million (cano, 1997: 19).measured by a lethality ratio of citizen deaths to injuries, cano argues that rios murder-to-injury ratio is closer to countries with wartime rates of bellicosity than to peacetime social control operations. the lethal outcome of police deadly force in rio suggests that police there aim to kill suspects and not just injure them. as paul chevigny (1996) has argued, if the police kill more than they injure or if the precision of their shots begins to increase suddenly, this suggests that the lethal shots may be fired deliberately. indeed, cano (1997) shows that approximately 70% of those hit by rio police gunfire do die - a lethality index of 2.3 to 1 (942 killed and 410 injured), contrasting with a rate for u.s. cities of less than one. yet just as homicide rates are not evenly distributed in brazil, neither is police use of deadly force. 9 the most common victim of a police shooting in sao paulo is young: 70% of those shot are between 18 and 25,97% are male, 62% are black, and the majority are poor and without a prior known criminal record (folha, 1999d: 3-4). in rio, citizen deaths are more likely in slums than in non-slum areas. in particular, in the late 1990s, citizen homicides by on-duty rio de janeiro police were six times higher in slum areas than in non-slum neighborhoods, and police shootings in slums were significantly more lethal than in non-slum areas (cano, 1997: 37). for example, the fatal outcome of police shootings in rio slums was more than two times greater than in non-slum areas.the vast majority of citizen murders by brazilian police exceed even the shoot-to-kill violence of the amadou diallo murder by four new york city policemen in 1999. using rio de janeiro autopsy reports, cano shows that in at least half of slum neighborhood killings, the victim had four or more bullet wounds, mostly in the shoulders, chest, and head, where death would very likely follow. victims of police deadly force in rio were hit from behind 65% of the time, suggesting that they had been fired upon while fleeing rather than confronting police (ibid: 43). if such citizen deaths were the result of slum stand-offs between police and heavily armed criminals, as brazilian police often claim, the citizen murders should have been accompanied by high rates of police deaths. yet police deaths in rio are more frequent in non-slum than in slum areas. in non-slum areas, one rio police officer is killed for every 35 deadly force shootings, in contrast to one officer in every 75 police shootings in slums (ibid.: 37). overall, rio police are eight times more likely to kill alleged perpetrators than to be killed themselves (ibid.: 22). research by the rio institute for religious studies discloses that up to one-quarter of the police murders of citizens in that city were execution-style deaths: after immobilizing the victim, police killed the person at point-blank range (u.s. department of state, 1999). forensic examinations of sao paulo police killings of citizens demonstrate that one of every 10 such murders has the marking of an assassination (folha, 1998d: 3-1).perceptions of legitimacy and justifications for invisibilitydespite the potentially very public nature of police killings of citizens, social science surveys show that randomly interviewed respondents in 10 brazilian state capitals usually do not consider police violence to be the most serious threat to their security; they view the violence of bandits and interpersonal (usually allegedly drug- and gang-related) violence between citizens as more serious (cardia, 1999: 28-29). nevertheless, brazilians also tend not to accord much legitimacy to the police. in 1997, in brazils largest and most modern city, sao paulo, one in four residents randomly interviewed claimed to fear the police more than they feared common criminals, and another third believed that police and common criminals are equally dangerous (reuters, 1997). yet 25 to 40% of respondents in the 10 brazilian state capitals believe police should have the right to stop and frisk persons suspected of illegality, even though only eight to 27% would grant police the right to shoot even an armed suspect (cardia , 1999: 90-91).these contradictory findings raise two related questions about police violence: why is there so little public outcry about citizen killings when brazilian police kill so many? 10 why do such killings result in so little political action and moral outrage when brazilian police are so poorly regarded? at the macrotheoretical level, the answer incorporates citizens perceptions of the victims of violence, the victims perceived criminal threat, the image of crime, and the war-on-crime mission of brazilian police. the victims of homicide, mostly from brazils underclass, are considered by the brazilian public and police to be intrinsically deviant and socially evil; where they live (in slums or on the streets) is seen as polluted and dangerous; their presence outside their slums is considered socially inadmissible (see caldeira, 1992; huggins and mesquita, 1995; scheper-hughes and hoffman, 1994). therefore, rather than viewing those murdered as victims, they are considered perpetrators whose dangerously bad behavior must be violently managed to protect good citizens. as alleged criminal perpetrators, the violence against or among these segments of the brazilian population is rendered invisible by an ideology that transforms the victims into delegitimized others who must be controlled for the good of legitimate special interests.thus, while centralized militarization of policing theoretically should make state-sponsored social control more obvious, in brazil it has significantly reduced the visibility of repressive state policies through its justificatory and mutually reinforcing ideologies of a war on crime and of police professionalism. the former allows policymakers and the public to define crime and deviant others as occurring outside legitimate political action, making sweeping, violent military-style 11 state repression appear to be socially necessary and morally unassailable when ordered or carried out by professional police. an ideology of modernized, rational police professionalism configures police as trained, skilled professionals who, as a result, have wide leeway in deciding for themselves when and how to use violence to vanquish ageneralized enemy in the militarized war against crime. when this war results in citizen deaths, such murders are presented as the inevitable outcome of police self-defense against dangerous criminals.privatizing and hiding murderanother essential component for understanding the relative moral and political invisibility of extreme public urban violence in brazil is the mixed status of its agents - a combination of police on duty, private rent-a-cops, and individual citizen and group vigilantes. in brazil, privatized social control has emerged to protect an increasingly segmented, isolated, and socially gated population of true citizens from those marginalized and delegitimized as dangerous criminals, a designation that reinforces the latters status as noncitizens. in such a privatized system, both alleged criminal perpetrators and the agents of their social control are balkanized, first into special groups of delegitimized others who must be controlled for the good of legitimate special interests and, second, into different kinds of agents paid by privileged segments of the population to serve their particular interests - whether such interests are seen as collective and reinforcing or competing.that some portion of citizen killings is privatized in brazil further obscures political and moral concern