The Victim-Perpetrator ‘Complex’:  The Socialization of Police with Violence in Urban Brazil

• In Event: The Subject of Wrongs: The Politics of Victimhood in Latin America, Part 1

Abstract

The relationship between victims and perpetrators is central to questions of violence and authority. This paper addresses a common assumption about a set of perceived perpetrators, the Brazilian police. Often understood to be extraordinarily violent, as though by nature or organizational symmetry, I examine how police become socialized into accepting and/or using routine and deadly violence. I use ethnographic evidence to show how some police, though initially resistant to the idea of killing perceived criminals, are pressured to reconsider their normative position and their actions. I focus on two complimentary processes –incidents of victimization of police, and their introduction to the legitimating structure surrounding police killings of citizens within the public security system, especially via incidents until recently known as resisting arrest followed by death. I use this evidence to ask larger questions about democracy, accountability and police reform in violent contexts.

Author

• Graham A Denyer Willis, University of Cambridge