‘The increase of violent crime is the result of a complex cycle that involves such factors as the violent pattern of reaction of the police; disbelieve in the justice system as a public and legitimate mediator of conflict and provider of just reprisal; private and violent responses to crime; resistance to democratization; and the population’s feeble perception of individual rights and its support for violent forms of chastisement [Dutch: tuchtiging, JvB].’
‘The majority of occurrences of larceny [Dutch: diefstal, JvB], robbery, and physical abuse, then, are not reported to the police. People either do not trust the police to deal with conflicts and crime, or they fear them because of their well-known brutality. Similarly, the justice system is perceived as ineffective by the majority of the population.’ In the southeast region of Brazil, 50.71 percent did not used the justice system after they were involved in a conflict.
Torture is something that is applied very often by the civil policemen, especially for the poorer suspects. The rich sometimes pay the police to find the people who robbed them, contrary to the poor who are neglected when they are being robbed. The upper-class also sometimes pay the police to torture the suspects.
Caldeira want to make clear that the statistics reporting crime are not so reliable. This because of the corrupt police, but also because the people do not report all of the things that happen to them. Another reason why the statistics are not accurate is because of the different branches in the organization of the police apparatus.
‘Increases in violence have been lower in the center, where the wealthier population lives, than in the outskirts, where the majority of the population is poor. (…) the rates of crimes against property are highest in the upper- and middle-class neighborhoods, whereas the rates of homicide are highest in the poorest districts of the city.’ (…) A recent study (…) showed that the districts with the highest incidence of homicide had a bad quality of life and a predominance of low-income families. (…) the districts with the highest murder rates were mostly very poor’ or lived in deteriorating central districts of the town. ‘The lowest rates were among middle- or upper-class districts in central areas.’ However, the districts with the highest robbery rates where also the wealthy and central districts. The increasing amount people that is in possession of a gun (legal and illegal) is significantly increasing. Caldeira sees this a sign that people ‘increasingly taking the task of defense in their own hands. Also the increasing trade in drugs is followed by more violence, ‘however, such claims are difficult to confirm because of the lack of concrete information.’
In order to understand they way crime works in a city like São Paulo Caldeira uses the following explanations:
1.) ‘crime is related to factors such as urbanization, migration, poverty, industrialization, and illiteracy.’
2.) ‘it is connected to the performance and characteristics of the institutions in charge of order: primarily the police, but also courts, prisons, and legislation.’
3.) ‘cultural elements such as the dominant conceptions about the spread of evil and the role of authority, and the conceptions about the manipulable body.’
4.) ‘the widespread adoption of illegal and private measures to combat criminality.’
5.) ‘policies concerning public security and patterns of police performance: the violent action of the state’ makes the situation only worse instead of controlling it.
The problems with criminality are not easily solvable with more investment in public security. The expansion of investment that started in 1984 did not effect the increase of crime and violence. We should also take in consideration that the ‘delegitimating of the judiciary system as a mediator of conflicts and [the] privatizing the process of vengeance’ only makes violence and crime worse.
Caldeira about the relation between poverty and crime: ‘The association of poverty and crime is always the first to come to people’s minds in discussion about violence. Moreover, all data indicate that violent crime is unevenly distributed and affects the poor especially. However, inequality and poverty have always marked Brazilian society, and it is hard to argue that they alone explain recent increases in violent criminality. Further, this argument often misrepresents violent criminality by allowing the view that poverty and inequality lead to poor people’s criminality. In reality, if inequality is an important factor it is not because poverty correlates directly with criminality, but rather because it reproduces the victimization and criminalization of the poor, the disregard of their rights, and their lack of access to justice.’ (p. 137) Also the behavior of the police is one of the reasons according to Caldeira, not so much their number of officers or their equipment. [My own experience close to the school was also very frightening. JvB]
Caldeira, T.P.R.
City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, 105-137.
