This article examines police violence against organized criminal groups (OCGs) in Rio de Janeiro. It offers a theory about five types of OCG regimesāInsurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Splitāand 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.
| Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro was authored by Beatriz Magaloni, Edgar Franco Vivanco and Vanessa Melo. It was published by Cambridge in APSR in 2020. |
