Prison-Gang Governance in the Urban Peripheries of Brazil: A Comparative Approach

• In Event: Prison Gangs, Drug Cartels and the Transformation of Crime and Governance in Latin American Cities

Abstract

In the urban peripheries of Brazil's Northeast, a radical change has taken place in the last 5-10 years, with the expansion of powerful prison gangs from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), and the rise of local prison gangs based on the CV and PCC models. Just as happened in Rio and São Paulo in the 1980s and 1990s, myriad small local street gangs--living in constant war with each other with disastrous effects on slum populations--have been subsumed into larger prison gang "factions". Although a "war among factions" now produces high levels of violence across communities due to invasions, within communities the factions often have a pacifying effect, easing old gang "beefs", prohibiting theft and other crimes, and enforcing rough social justice and dispute resolution. This paper presents what is perhaps the first systematic comparative study of prison-gang governance practices in multiple communities across different cities. In each community, we measure a series of governance dimensions and track their change over time. We find that dispute resolution is a particularly important and near-constant feature of gang governance, and speculate that it is essential to winning the good will of slum residents.

Author

• Benjamin Lessing, University of Chicago