Police Pacifying Rio's Slums: Mixed Results from State Intervention

This article examines police violence against organized criminal groups (OCGs) in Rio de Janeiro. It offers a theory about five types of OCG regimes—Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Split—and how police intervention varies across these contexts.

Criminal Regimes & Police Responses: The study reveals that different OCG regimes react distinctly to state interventions:

• Insurgent: Confronts the state directly.
• Bandit: Evades integration with state actors.
• Symbiotic: Collaborates heavily with local authorities and communities.
• Predatory: Dominates territory strictly, often through force.
• Split: Faces intense rivalry from other criminal groups.

Methodology: Evidence comes from a multimethod approach, including:

• Quasi-experimental statistical analyses.
• Automated text analysis of official documents and social media posts.
• Extensive qualitative field research in several favelas.
• A large-N survey conducted across multiple intervention zones.

Findings: The article demonstrates how the implementation of Rio's 'Pacifying Police Units' (UPPs) resulted in dramatically different security outcomes depending on whether OCGs were confrontational or collaborative with state actors.