‘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.
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
City of Walls: Summary Chapter 2. CRISIS, CRIMINALS, AND THE SPREAD OF EVIL
The Paulistanos interviewed by Caldeira, think that the spaces of crime are marginal, often related to favelas and cortiços. The solution to solve these problems are strong institutions and strong authorities.
Plano Collor was a plan that was developed to make the inflation decrease. However, it didn’t help, it even make the inequality bigger. Especially the middle-class was hit by the increasing inflation, their savings where frozen by the government and after a couple of months the value had decreased enormously. This caused among many people the distrust of the government. For other people it was a reason to stick to a hope for a strong government that could change all this, or even to look back with nostalgia towards Getúlio Vargas or the military dictatorship.
The interviews Caldeira took with three poor working-class men reveal the pessimism of these people. To the question about what kind of rights people have one of them answers:
‘What rights? None. Only the right to go to work, to come back home and sleep in order to go to work the next morning. The poor man spends four hours in the traffic to get to work, two hours to go two to come back’.
They are very negative about the politics of Collor.
A very telling expression related to public space is the next one:
‘My salary is only enough for eating. It’s not even enough to go the amusement park to take Maria [his wife, JvB] to play on the Ferris wheel. If I spend in transportation to the park, then I won’t have money to go to work the day after. So I stay home, it’s better, I stay home…’
[This quote really shows the depressing consequences of poverty, these people are really excluded from the economically determined spaces. ‘You have to pay for the public life’ the architect Charles W. Moore in an article with the same name. JvB]
Another very good point Caldeira makes is about aestatics and appearance. The middle-classes often refer to the poor as being more lucky than they are because they are only in the realm of necessity and therefore they don’t have to care for their appearance. Caldeira sees this as one of the many prejudices the middle-class has about the poor. (I think she is totally right in that.) She refers to the dialogues at 2.9 about the fashion. [I think we can also stress this argument to the realm of architecture. To create a real city the public buildings should be more than just products of necessity; they need to become human artifices to speak in Arendtian terminology. Arendt writes: ‘Nowhere else does the sheer durability of the world of things appear in such purity and clarity, nowhere else therefore does this thing-world reveal itself so spectacularly as the non-mortal home for mortal beings.’]
When it comes to social distance there are several ways of creating borders: The most obvious one is to create a physical border, by making a fence. Another way is ‘derogatory conceptions’ [Dutch: geringschattende opvattingen, JvB] about the poor, for example to emphasize that they are not part of the consumer society.
The fact that the poor have television is often seen as wrong but the richer part of the society. They say they can better spent it on a refrigerator, something that is more neccecary but also a lot more expensive. However, in many cases the television is the only form of leisure the poor have, and it is their connection with the outside world.
[The following interview shows the vulnerability of democracy in Brazil:]
‘We used to think that the lack of freedom and the censorship [during the military regime, JvB] were bad. Today I think that the military regime should come back. For example the case of kidnapping. It’s absurd the lack of security that one feels. I’m nobody, I don’t have many assets [Dutch: heeft iets met geld te maken, JvB], but Iám afraid that suddenly some guy gets my son in order to ask a ransom of five million. I’m scared to death… Anyone may be kidnapped, because now kidnapping has become the fashion. Why? Because of impunity [Dutch: straffeloosheid, JvB]. We were talking about the military regime: when the Al-5 was introduced do you remember? [Al-5 whas the most repressive period of the military regime.] Bank robbery ended… It is impunity which makes us feel insecure.’
Kidnapping is the biggest fear people have in higher social classes.
Very interessting conception about the walls comes forward in an interview Caldeira did with three women from Morumbi. A fragment:
‘[Interviewer:] Why do you prefer to live in a house instead of in one of the condominiums?
O: Freedom. To me, freedom first of all, and then the contact of too many children that I would be unable to prevent [in order to] control the friendships of my children. (…) The famous fear of drugs. My sister-in-law lives in a condominium: all day long you have children from here, there, everywhere. You don’t know who the children belong to…
M: Because the houses are not enclosed, the house doesn’t have walls… Only the condominium’s wall, but the house has only the grass, and in a while it is already another house. American-style.
O: All open, and you don’t know the contact your child has. How are you going to keep them separate? You don’t have a wall, how are you going to say , “No, my son, you receive the friends at home that I think are better, I am going to select these friends”? (…) There are cases of a child robbing another child’s house in order to steal dollar to buy marijuana. I won’t name names, but there are cases… in a condominium.’
[What this interview makes clear is the walling of the houses do not only function as barriers to prevent people from the outside to enter your domain, but also to lock the children in. The wall makes it possible to control the friendships of your children. It is the housekeeper who decides what the best company is for the children. The most ironic thing about this is that person ‘O’ her argument to live in a house is because of freedom it offers. The expression ‘How are you going to keep them separate?’ also gives the impression that children need this kind of wall in order to protect them from the temptations in the outside world. The house has become a space of preventative rehab. JvB]
Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p53-101.
Plano Collor was a plan that was developed to make the inflation decrease. However, it didn’t help, it even make the inequality bigger. Especially the middle-class was hit by the increasing inflation, their savings where frozen by the government and after a couple of months the value had decreased enormously. This caused among many people the distrust of the government. For other people it was a reason to stick to a hope for a strong government that could change all this, or even to look back with nostalgia towards Getúlio Vargas or the military dictatorship.
The interviews Caldeira took with three poor working-class men reveal the pessimism of these people. To the question about what kind of rights people have one of them answers:
‘What rights? None. Only the right to go to work, to come back home and sleep in order to go to work the next morning. The poor man spends four hours in the traffic to get to work, two hours to go two to come back’.
They are very negative about the politics of Collor.
A very telling expression related to public space is the next one:
‘My salary is only enough for eating. It’s not even enough to go the amusement park to take Maria [his wife, JvB] to play on the Ferris wheel. If I spend in transportation to the park, then I won’t have money to go to work the day after. So I stay home, it’s better, I stay home…’
[This quote really shows the depressing consequences of poverty, these people are really excluded from the economically determined spaces. ‘You have to pay for the public life’ the architect Charles W. Moore in an article with the same name. JvB]
Another very good point Caldeira makes is about aestatics and appearance. The middle-classes often refer to the poor as being more lucky than they are because they are only in the realm of necessity and therefore they don’t have to care for their appearance. Caldeira sees this as one of the many prejudices the middle-class has about the poor. (I think she is totally right in that.) She refers to the dialogues at 2.9 about the fashion. [I think we can also stress this argument to the realm of architecture. To create a real city the public buildings should be more than just products of necessity; they need to become human artifices to speak in Arendtian terminology. Arendt writes: ‘Nowhere else does the sheer durability of the world of things appear in such purity and clarity, nowhere else therefore does this thing-world reveal itself so spectacularly as the non-mortal home for mortal beings.’]
When it comes to social distance there are several ways of creating borders: The most obvious one is to create a physical border, by making a fence. Another way is ‘derogatory conceptions’ [Dutch: geringschattende opvattingen, JvB] about the poor, for example to emphasize that they are not part of the consumer society.
The fact that the poor have television is often seen as wrong but the richer part of the society. They say they can better spent it on a refrigerator, something that is more neccecary but also a lot more expensive. However, in many cases the television is the only form of leisure the poor have, and it is their connection with the outside world.
[The following interview shows the vulnerability of democracy in Brazil:]
‘We used to think that the lack of freedom and the censorship [during the military regime, JvB] were bad. Today I think that the military regime should come back. For example the case of kidnapping. It’s absurd the lack of security that one feels. I’m nobody, I don’t have many assets [Dutch: heeft iets met geld te maken, JvB], but Iám afraid that suddenly some guy gets my son in order to ask a ransom of five million. I’m scared to death… Anyone may be kidnapped, because now kidnapping has become the fashion. Why? Because of impunity [Dutch: straffeloosheid, JvB]. We were talking about the military regime: when the Al-5 was introduced do you remember? [Al-5 whas the most repressive period of the military regime.] Bank robbery ended… It is impunity which makes us feel insecure.’
Kidnapping is the biggest fear people have in higher social classes.
Very interessting conception about the walls comes forward in an interview Caldeira did with three women from Morumbi. A fragment:
‘[Interviewer:] Why do you prefer to live in a house instead of in one of the condominiums?
O: Freedom. To me, freedom first of all, and then the contact of too many children that I would be unable to prevent [in order to] control the friendships of my children. (…) The famous fear of drugs. My sister-in-law lives in a condominium: all day long you have children from here, there, everywhere. You don’t know who the children belong to…
M: Because the houses are not enclosed, the house doesn’t have walls… Only the condominium’s wall, but the house has only the grass, and in a while it is already another house. American-style.
O: All open, and you don’t know the contact your child has. How are you going to keep them separate? You don’t have a wall, how are you going to say , “No, my son, you receive the friends at home that I think are better, I am going to select these friends”? (…) There are cases of a child robbing another child’s house in order to steal dollar to buy marijuana. I won’t name names, but there are cases… in a condominium.’
[What this interview makes clear is the walling of the houses do not only function as barriers to prevent people from the outside to enter your domain, but also to lock the children in. The wall makes it possible to control the friendships of your children. It is the housekeeper who decides what the best company is for the children. The most ironic thing about this is that person ‘O’ her argument to live in a house is because of freedom it offers. The expression ‘How are you going to keep them separate?’ also gives the impression that children need this kind of wall in order to protect them from the temptations in the outside world. The house has become a space of preventative rehab. JvB]
Caldeira, T.P.R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo, University of California Press, 2000, p53-101.
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