Police Abuse and Democracy in Brazil

Latin American Studies 320:

Directed Experiential Learning
Supervisor: Dr. Michelle Bonner

By: David Romero Espitia

Democracy expanded drastically throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century. This

transition from authoritarianism to democracy led to the increased assessment of the

concept of democracy, its definition, and what it meant for these newly established

regimes. In Latin America, violence by the police – and its support by the law, courts,

and state agencies – was an integral part of authoritarianism. The introduction of

democratic institutions to the region did not necessarily result in the democratization of

the police, or in the abolition of police abuse. This article uses Brazil as a case study to

identify the three most significant impacts of police abuse on democracy in this particular

country. The paper argues that police abuse has led to an escalation of human rights

violations, increased socioeconomic inequality, and a weakening of citizenship in Brazil.

Police abuse is often viewed in the field of political science as an instance of

deviation with little or no relevance on democracy (Bonner et al. 2018: p. 2). However,

the impact of police abuse on society jeopardizes the quality of established and newly

formed democracies. As Bonner et al. (2018: p. 3) argue, new examinations of the

concept of democracy should place policing at the forefront. The relationship between

police abuse and democracy is particularly important in the understanding of the

development of democracy in those countries that experienced the transition from

authoritarian regimes in the late twentieth century.

A thorough examination of the relationship between police abuse and democracy

requires a clear definition of the concept of police abuse and what it entails. Police abuse,

as defined by Bonner et al (2018: p. 3) includes police actions that may stay within or

exceed the limits of legality but significantly jeopardize citizens’ rights, receive limited

accountability, and influence the promotion of particular political and economic

1
objectives. This term is often interchangeably used with police violence or police

brutality. Kania and Mackey (1977) distinguish police violence, which includes

appropriate and inappropriate use of force to maintain law and order, from police

brutality, that refers to a more extreme use of violence and the use of force for illicit

purposes.

Amongst what can be considered as police abuse is arbitrary arrest, selective

surveillance and crowd control, harassment, sexual assault, torture, killings,

disappearances, corruption, white-collar crime, political policing, spying, and gender-

based violence (Bonner et al. 2018: p. 2-4). These multiple expressions of police abuse

constitute an obvious excessive use of force by the police and therefore an abuse of basic

rights. Democratic governance should result, according to multiple studies, in fewer

human rights abuse, especially in terms of the violation of an individual’s physical

integrity by state forces (Davenport 1995, 1999; Fein 1995; Henderson 1991; Poe et al.

1999; Poe and Tate 1994). Thus the existence of police abuse creates an antagonist

relationship between police institutions and democracy.

In order to properly study the impact of police abuse on democracy, a brief

assessment of the concept of democracy must be made. Schmitter and Karl (1991: p. 76)

define democracy as: “a system of governance in which rulers are held accountable for

their actions in the public realm by citizens, acting indirectly through the competition and

cooperation of their elected representatives.” According to O’Donnell (2004: p. 42), “the

rule of law is among the essential pillars upon which any high-quality democracy rests.”

In the absence of the rule of law, which guarantees full and equal legal protection to all,

democratic states (i.e., those with regular elections and formal structures of democratic

2
governance) lack qualities that guarantee political and many other forms of social and

economic engagement (Prado et al. 2012: p. 256).

In addition to this, the expectations of policing within a democracy must be

accounted for when discussing the impact of police abuse on democracy. To begin with,

police are the only institution with the legitimate right to use deadly violence towards

citizens; the boundary of the use of violence is defined by the respect for human rights

(Bonner et al. 2018: p. 3). Moreover, Bayley (2006) provides the ‘democratic criteria’ for

policing in which 1) police are accountable to law, not to government; 2) police protect

human rights, including those related to democratic participation; 3) there are constraints

on the use of the police force that are enforced by institutions external to the police force;

4) the police force’s priority is the protection of citizens as individuals and private

groups, not the state. Unfortunately, the performance of police institutions across Latin

America democracies has fallen well below these expectations.

Although the underperformance of police forces has not been limited to Latin

America’s new democracies, especial emphasis in this paper will be on determining the

relationship between policing and post-transition democracies. In Latin America,

violence by the police was an integral part of authoritarianism, yet the transitions into

democracy did not result in the expected transformation of the police institutions. Instead,

“close military-police ties, militarized training and doctrine, high rates of violence, a lack

of effective court oversight, and continuity of organizational forms and personnel” are all

characteristics of the police in contemporary Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay

(Pereira and Ungar 2004: p. 1).

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 As Pereira and Ungar (2004) argue, the behavior of Latin American state security

forces is tainted with the legacy of authoritarianism. According to their study on policing

in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, the last authoritarian regimes in these countries

made policing more repressive, militarized, and less accountable to the public (2004: p.

5). The police forces in Latin America are dominated by high degrees of corruption,

police abuse and extra-judicial killings, and minimal to no adequate oversight (Prado et

al. 2012: p. 259). In relation to democracy, it would be contradictory to say that a country

is democratic when these behaviors persist (Bayley 2006: p. 18). As Tilly writes (1998: p.

223-224), a simple analysis of whether the police reported to the military or to civilian

authorities would serve as an excellent guide to judge whether a regime is democratic or

not.

Using Brazil as a case study, this paper intends to contribute to the study of the

relationship between police abuse and democracy within new democracies. The first

section of this case study examines how police abuse in Brazil has resulted in an increase

in human rights violations since the countries transition to democracy, resulting in a

degree of violence that is detrimental to the country’s democracy. The second section

argues that police abuse in Brazil is mainly experienced in marginalized sections of

Brazilian society and that race, class, and geography often determine police behavior,

exacerbating socioeconomic inequality. The third section amplifies the study of the

impact of police abuse on citizenship and argues that an increase in human rights

violations and a worsening of socioeconomic inequality leads to a “stratification of

citizenship”, therefore weakening democracy in Brazil.1

1Stratified citizenship occurs when “citizenship becomes effectively constrained by deficient protection,
while stratification limits the power and ability of marginalized citizens to articulate demands for

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Police Abuse and Human Rights Violations

Since its formation in the early 19th century, the use of violence, discrimination,

arbitrariness, and disrespect of rights by the Brazilian police has been well known

(Caldeira & Holston 1999: p. 700). The severity of police abuse has reached levels in

which the Brazilian police force has been the main perpetrator of human right violations

(HRV) across the country. These police practices have resulted in worrying levels of

violence that put into question the future of democracy in Brazil. Although HRV have

occurred throughout Brazil’s history, the city of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro serve as

the best examples to analyze the relationship between democracy and human rights post-

authoritarianism.

The 1979 United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement endorsed the

idea that the police should play a crucial role in protecting human rights and assuring

equal treatment of citizens (Trebilcock and Daniels 2008: p. 110; Manning 2005: p. 23).

This idea of policing is labeled as democratic policing and it is often seen as most

relevant to countries transitioning towards democracy (Prado et al 2012: p. 257).

However, as Ahnen argues (2003), HRV in Brazil have actually worsened since Brazil’s

transition from authoritarianism to democracy in 1985.2

The question of why there is such a high level of police violence and HRV is

often asked and it requires a multifaceted answer. One of the factors contributing to this

problem is the country’s history, in which both the civilian and military regimes have

relied upon the police as a means of social and political oppression (Moon 2009). As

protection—including protection from state repression—thereby further constraining citizenship for

marginalized communities” (Gonzalez 2017: p. 495).
2 Ahnen (2003: p. 321) defines human rights violations as the violation of the physical integrity of citizens
by state agents who employ physical force in an excessive manner.

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Caldeira and Holston note (1999: p. 695), “police violence has reached unprecedented

levels, and the forces of law and order are themselves one of the main agents of violence

in many cities.”

In 1992, the Sao Paulo police killed more people than the previous military

regime did throughout its many years in power (Brinks 2003: p. 1). In addition to this,

Caldeira (2002: p. 236) notes that in the last 20 years the Sao Paulo police have killed at

least 11,692 people. In Rio de Janeiro, police killings have steadily increased since 1999

and actually made up 14 percent of the 7,594 killings reported for 2006 (Moon 2009).

Data from the University of Sao Paulo Nucleo de Estudos de Violencia (Center for the

Study of Violence, USP/NEV) shows that of the 4,018 reported cases of police violence

in the Metropolitan Sao Paulo Area between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1998,

over 2,500 of these cases occurred after the return to civilian government in 1985 (Clark

2008: p. 87-88).

The degree of violence and abuse suffered by ordinary citizens at the hands of the

police represents a serious deficiency in the democratic system established in Brazil. Out

of the three national police forces in Brazil —the Policia Militar (Militarized Police, PM),

the Policia Civil (Civil Police, CP), and the Policia Federal (The Federal Police, FP), the

Policia Militar is known to be the main perpetrator of police abuse (Americas Watch

1987; Becker and Becker 1986; Caldeira 2000). This is likely due to its continued

authoritarian practices and institutional structure. The PM was given policing powers

during the authoritarian regime (1961-1985) and these powers were extended after the

1988 constitution (Clark 2008: p. 87). Due to its authoritarian roots, the PM follows a

highly militaristic behaviour and philosophy while also benefitting from impunity against

6
civilian persecution (Beck and Becker 1986; Clark 2008).

The most concrete representation of an authoritarian legacy and police abuse in

contemporary Brazil is the Policia Militar.3 The most worrying characteristics of the

PM’s behaviour is the incorporation of the outrageously elevated number of abuses in

ordinary daily life and, most importantly, that these have persisted even with the

consolidation of democracy (Caldeira 1997: p. 157). In the five years directly following

the transition to democracy, civilian deaths in military police actions increased from 305

in 1987 to 1470 in 1992 (Human Rights Watch 1993: p. 5).4 This rise in the number of

PM killings is largely due to the efficiency of the institution being measured solely on the

elimination of criminals and the definition of a criminal being blurred in the transition to

democracy.5

As Caldeira notes (1997: p. 158), the primary targets of police violence are not

political advisories but rather suspected criminals; this labeling of criminals thus results

in a popular support of police violence. The transition to democracy resulted in the police

force redirecting all their power against the excluded segments of society, those deemed

as dangerous, made up of poor, black workers and unemployed youngsters. In addition to

this, the Brazilian police has adopted a mano dura (firm hand) agenda on their all out war

against crime (Light et al. 2015: p. 225). 6 Consequently, this has led to uncontrollable

3 The 1988 Constitution preserved a separate system of criminal justice, instituted under the dictatorship,
for the discipline of military police, through a compromise that permits states that have more than twenty-
four thousand military police personnel to have such separate tribunals (Constitution of 1988, Art. 125).
4 During the same time the number of PM officers reached 72,000 in the state of Sao Paulo and 30,000 in
the state of Rio de Janeiro, meaning that each state has special tribunals for crimes committed by the PM.
These tribunals, however, often leave these crimes unpunished (Human Rights Watch 1993).
5 The military police is responsible for five times the amount of homicides as police officers and totalled
76.8 percent of all police homicides from 1994 to 2001 (Ahnen 2003: p. 152-153).
6 This agenda stems from Latin America’s heritage of authoritarian rule, in which regime opponents and
criminals were both identified as enemies (Chevigny, 1999: p. 49).

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levels of violence in which the disrespect of civil rights and the failure of democratization

strongly affect every day social interactions (Caldeira & Holston 1999: p. 696).7 As Arias

and Goldstein (2010) note, a regime with high levels of violence is not worthy of being

considered a democracy.

However, lethal violence and police violence has not affected Brazilian society

equally. When discussing police behaviour in Brazil, scholarship must consider race,

class, and geography. The next section will examine the relationship between

socioeconomic inequality and police violence. The argument presented in the following

section is that police abuse continues to reinforce the high levels of inequality in Brazil.

Police Abuse and Socioeconomic Inequality

The role that socioeconomic equality plays in democracy has been a concept

constantly examined by scholars. Some have argued that liberal democratic regimes must

maintain some degree of socioeconomic equality (Linz and Stepan 1996; Beetham 1999)

and others have argued that socioeconomic equality is crucial for citizen participation in

politics when discussing social democracy (Bobbio 1996). Bonner et al. (2018: p. 19)

argue that police abuse is a determinant factor in understanding the boundaries of

socioeconomic inequality in democracy and in particular political economies. Within this

context, I argue that police violence in Brazil occurs for the good and the protection of

the upper class at the expense of the marginalized, further exacerbating the

socioeconomic inequality of the country.

7
Between 1980 and 2012, the annual number of homicides in the country increased from 13,910 to 56,337,
while the homicide rate rose from 11.7 to 29.0, a 143% increase. The greatest rise occurred between 1980
and 1997, when the homicide rate stabilized at over 25 homicides per 100,000 people, remaining high since
then (Amnesty International, 2015). The rapid increase in violent crimes in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro
also exceeded international averages during the years after the transition to democracy (Caldeira & Holston
1999).

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 When referring to the link between the police and political-economic regimes, the

police are responsible for realization of the rights being offered in such regimes and they

are also the “figurative embodiment of the ways of looking at the world that inform a

political economic approach” (Bonner et al. 2018: p. 20). For example, lower levels of

economic development usually result in higher repression due to scarcity and the

increased conflict between the haves and have-nots (Poe and Tate 1994). Moreover, a

rapid rate of development can further worsen levels of repression, as this type of

development is usually unequal and dislocated causing greater conflict among citizens

(Olson 1963). Economic development, particularly in terms of rapid urbanization, can be

associated with higher levels of police violence because this is where most of the drug-

trafficking networks and criminal activities that police repress are found (Ahnen 2007: p.

145).

In Brazil, a social climate favourable to the use of police force was created

through the economic stagnation experienced after the transition to democracy, the

deepening social inequalities, and the growth of urban criminality (Paes-Machado and

Noronha 2002: p. 54). Chevigny (1995) argues that police abuse depends on three factors:

the degree of social acceptance of violence to resolve interpersonal conflict, the

consciousness of one’s rights as a citizen, and the effectiveness of the government to

control the use of police force. In this sense, Paes-Machado and Noronha (2002: p. 54)

argue, “The impotence and ambivalence of attitudes towards the police contribute to the

justification of police brutality against the poor and non-white sectors of society.”

Similarly, racist police practices can be understood as means of controlling non-white

groups, those which new forms of authoritarianism and economic organization affect the

9
most (McLaughlin 1996).

Pereira (2000) argues that this relationship between the police and the different

social classes has divided Brazilian society and has led to a hybrid regime he labels as

“elitist liberalism”.8 In accordance with Pereira’s point of view, Muller (2018) notes that

policing in Brazil is about maintaining a particular order; one that maintains

socioeconomic inequality in support of neoliberal markets. In other words, the elite

employ police violence to maintain the poor’s quiescence in Brazil’s unequal society.

This has led to the classification of Brazil as an “uncivil democracy” due to the

“concurrence of democratic politics and systematic violence against its citizens”, a

society in which police abuse explicitly targets the poor and non-white population in

racist ways (Caldeira and Holston 1999: p. 692).

In 2002, Caldeira identified an underline paradox: rich and poor, elites and

workers support police violence against suspected criminals even though this makes them

more susceptible to being victims of these police behaviours themselves. Furthermore, it

is ironic that “even the main victims of police violence—the working classes—support”

some forms of police violence as a response to crime (Caldeira and Holston 1999: p.

706). French (2013) identifies a less talked about, but equally interesting, paradox that he

defines as the “black on black nature” of police abuse, especially by the military police. 9

These paradoxes help to explain police abuse towards the marginalized communities in

Brazil.

8 According to Pereira (2000), democracy is Brazil is firmly in place to benefit the upper and middle
classes, but is significantly weak for the poor masses.
9 Composed largely of black men, the military police are known to behave in unjust, violent, and racist
ways against the black population (Brito 2003: p. 97).

10
 Muller (2018) notes that the police are often involved in operations in which

segments of society, especially those living in shantytowns near the rich sectors of the

city, are pushed out through police pacification projects in order to give way for those

seem more suitable to participate in the market. This, however, is not a new phenomenon

as city elite’s have seen favelas (shantytowns) as a threat to their modernizing projects

(Zaluar and Alvito 2006: pgs. 7-18). This can help to explain the support and acceptance

for militarized operations such as that of “Operation Rio” in late 1994 and the one that

recently occurred in early 2018 where the federal army, accompanied by high divisions of

the PM were deployed to cleanse the favelas and to rid the police of officers involved in

corruption and illicit activities (Magalhães 2018). This serves as a clear demonstration as

to how this social context generates a multi-sector support for “mano dura” politics on

criminals in order to re-establish “public order”, resulting in police abuse mainly towards

marginalized communities.

Moreover, Caldeira (2000: p. 207) describes police behaviour in poor

neighbourhoods of Sao Paulo as a “continuous pattern of abuses by police forces, their

disrespect for rights, and routine practices of injustice and discrimination.” Amnesty

International (2015) notes that the illicit drug activity and police corruption in Rio de

Janeiro has led to a high number of extrajudicial executions carried out by Civil and

Military Police forces in operations in the favelas and periphery neighbourhoods, which

usually go unpunished and mainly target poor young black males. These types of

occurrences, although unjustifiable, are not surprising, as they have become a regular

practice in societies with similar established inequalities where marginalized youth

11
encounter police harassment and beatings as a regular part of their interactions with

police (Bonner et al. 2018: p. 3).

In addition to police officers, death squads and militias are responsible for a

significant number of homicides in Brazil.10 In 2012, out of the 56,000 victims of murder

in Brazil, 30,000 (54 percent) were young people aged between 15 and 29 years. From

these, 90 percent were men and 77 percent were black (Amnesty International 2015: p.

11).11 Studies within the last 30 years surrender the same conclusion; darker-skinned men

have historically been common targets of police harassment as they are 2.4 times more

likely to be abused by police than white men (Mitchell and Wood 1999: p. 1013; Lopes

and Moreira 2005, p. 91). Police discrimination, lethal violence, especially extrajudicial

killings, and the resultant inequality establishes structural discrimination where the black

population sees its rights to access higher education, health, work, and decent housing

significantly impaired (Amnesty International 2015).

The structural discrimination mainly caused by police abuse and state repression

has worsened the conditions of socioeconomic inequality in Brazil. This has limited the

ability of marginalized communities from articulating demands for protection, equal

participation, and acknowledgement within Brazilian society. This in turn has constrained

the citizenship of marginalized communities, negatively impacting Brazilian democracy.

10 According to Zaluar and Conceição (2007), the militias are made up of police officers and former police
officers (mainly military), a few fire fighters and some prison officers, all of whom have military training,
belong to institutions of the state and take it upon themselves to protect and provide ‘security’ in
neighbourhoods supposedly threatened by criminals. On the other hand, “deaths squads are mainly
composed of serving or retired Civil and Military Police, or officers who have been expelled from the
forces, in addition to other law enforcement officials” (Amnesty International 2015).
11 A previous study by Cano (2010: p. 35) shows that between 1993 and 1996, 70.2 percent of deaths at the
hands of police in Rio de Janeiro were non-white, while non-whites constituted 40 percent of the
population and in São Paulo, where non-whites constituted 27 percent of the population at that time, they
accounted for 43 percent of those killed by the police.

12
The next section seeks to address the issue of citizenship in terms of increased human

rights violations and high levels of socioeconomic inequality.

Stratified Citizenship

Police abuse and violence towards ordinary citizens demonstrated the deficiency

of the democratic system in Brazil, in particular the disrespect for some of the most basic

rights inherent in the idea of citizenship.12 The protections to life, equality, and freedom

of expression have all been principles of the ideal citizenship under liberal democracy

(Bonner et al. 2018: p. 13). Citizenship has traditionally referred to as a set of political

practices involving a political community’s specific rights and duties, amongst which the

most important is participation in the democratic process (Bellamy 2008: p. 3).13 I argue

that police abuse has limited these specific rights and has resulted in the stratification of

citizenship in Brazil.

Costa and Thompson (2011) argue that police abuse has mainly undermined the

civil rights of Brazilians. This, however, is deficient in the analysis of citizenship when

the high levels of HRV and socioeconomic inequality are included as part of the study.

Therefore, in addition to civil rights, police abuse in Brazil has also jeopardized the

political and social rights of many sectors of Brazilian society.14 While these rights are

12 T.H Marshal (1973:84) defines citizenship as “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a
community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status
is endowed. There is no universal principle that determines what those rights and duties shall be, but
societies in which citizenship is a developing institution create an image of an ideal citizenship against
which achievement can be measured and towards which aspiration can be directed.”
13 On this point, Bellamy (2008: p. 79) notes that citizenship is often identified with rights and that these
rights form the basis of citizenship and help to assess the quality of citizenship through the realization of
such rights.
14 Civil rights represent the fundamental rights such as life, property, and equality under the law. They are
based of individual freedom, which cannot be guaranteed without an independent judiciary and state
protection. Political rights, for their part, refer participation of all, either directly or through representatives,
in the decisions polis. In addition to voting, political rights include open access to decision-making
positions in the political arena and the ability to join together political demands. Finally, there are also

13
usually incorporated in a country’s constitution or legal framework, it is often the police

who serve as the initial contact point between the judicial institutions and the citizenry

and it is most often up to the police discretion to determine who deserves protection of

these rights and who is seen as suspects and a threat to society (Waddington 1999).

In essence, it is ultimately the police force and individual police officers who

determine who counts as a full citizen. Many times the poor, members of indigenous

groups, religious and ethnic minorities, or transgendered citizens suffer most from

stigmatization, discrimination, and are usually criminalized and dismissed by police as

police judgment is determined by society’s stereotypes (Bonner et al. 2018: p. 14). In

Latin America, police forces routinely fail at providing what is, in theory, a public good

and the fundamental right of citizenship (Gonzalez 2017: 498).

Kymlicka and Norman (1994: p. 353) make a useful distinction within the concept

of citizenship as they note that there is a difference between “citizenship- as-legal-status,

that is, as full membership in a particular political community; and citizenship-as-

desirable-activity, where the extent and quality of one’s citizenship is a function of one’s

participation in that community”. However, Gonzalez (2017) argues that the provision of

security is deficient in Latin America resulting in the undermining of citizenship-as-

activity and leading to a constrained citizenship characterized by impediments to the

realization of civil, social, and political dimensions of citizenship due to the alienation

from citizens to the state. Gonzales also argues that the highly unequal distribution of

protection and repression occurs the lines of race, class, and geography, which results in

social rights, which provide for the participation of all in the wealth produced in a given society. These
include the right to education, health, work, retirement, and housing (T.H. Marshal 1973).

14
the stratification of citizenship-as-rights since access to security and protection from state

repression is determined by preexisting social hierarchies and power structures.

Gonzalez (2017) argues that deficient security provision yields constrained

citizenship, while unequal distribution results in stratification of citizenship. The

incapability of Latin American democracies in enforcing the laws has resulted in the

increase of “brown areas”, territories in which citizens lack the adequate levels of

security to participate in everyday political, economic, and social activities that form a

crucial part of citizenship (O’Donnell 1993). As long as policing strategies are

constructed based on markers inequality such as race, class and geography, policing will

produce divergent access to rights and relationships to state institutions, resulting in

stratified citizenship (Gonzalez 2017: p. 495).

This is all very representative of Brazil’s context of policing in relation to

citizenship. Not only is citizenship affected by the use of lethal violence by the police, it

is also impacted by the overall behavior of the police towards particular social groups.

Police are often involved in the forced removal of residents living in conditions of

homelessness from certain neighborhoods, the arrest of transgendered women, and the

repression of youth from low-income neighborhoods in Sao Paulo; these police actions

criminalize the behavior of marginalized populations and violates the citizenship rights of

those considered as “agents of insecurity” (Galdeano Cruz: 2009). Even within

marginalized communities, the wealthier individuals receive better protection and those

who conform the lower class are subject to higher levels or repression (Gonzalez 2017: p.

503).

15
 This only serves to replicate the reality of the distribution of protection and

repression in low-income communities across Latin America. In Sao Paulo’s poor,

mainly black periphery neighborhoods, the absence of preventive policing and the

reluctance to respond to citizens’ call for help is regular occurrence (America’s Watch

1987). The unequal distribution of police presence and state resources amongst low-

income and high-income communities is present across Brazil. The low-income

communities usually lack police bases, police cars, and police personnel, while the

wealthy areas have too many resources and an abundant number of police bases and staff

(Gonzalez 2017: p. 503-504).

These experiences demonstrate that the there is a worrying misbalance between

the behavior of the police and citizenship in Brazil. Communities with white and wealthy

citizens are able to demand greater protection, yet Black residents lack access to

protection from police violence and abuse, and are excluded from participating in

policing strategies and the democratic process in general (Alves 2014). As Gonzalez

(2017: p. 505) concludes, “citizens that are disadvantaged by existing societal hierarchies

are left without the protection needed to exercise citizenship-as-activity, but also

subjected to patterns of state repression that undermine their access to citizenship-as

rights, leaving them further unable to make effective demands for the protection to which

all citizens are entitled.”

Conclusion

This paper has brought to the forefront the importance behind considering the

police as a crucial actor in the development of democracy in Brazil. Of particular

importance to this case study was the relationship between police abuse with the overall

16
quality of Brazil’s democratic structure. The paper argued that police abuse has led to an

escalation of human rights violations, increased socioeconomic inequality, and a

weakening of citizenship in Brazil.

In particular, Brazil’s experience with authoritarianism has caused policing under

a new democracy to face difficult challenges, many of which have been complicated to

address due to the institution’s authoritarian legacy. Police abuse in Brazil has resulted in

an increase in human rights violations since the countries transition to democracy,

resulting in a degree of violence that is detrimental to the country’s democracy. Police

abuse in Brazil is mainly experienced in marginalized sections of Brazilian society and

race, class, and geography has often determined police behavior, exacerbating

socioeconomic inequality. An increase in human rights violations and a worsening of

socioeconomic inequality has led to a “stratification of citizenship”, therefore weakening

democracy in Brazil.

Although this paper has focused on Brazil as a case study, it has intended to

contribute to the overall research of police abuse and its impact on democracy across the

region. Latin American police forces all face similar challenges and the behaviours that

characterize these institutions are similar from country to country. This means that,

independent of an authoritarian legacy or not, each country in the region must work

towards addressing issues of human rights violations, socioeconomic inequalities, and

citizenship in order to improve the standards of living for all its citizens and to guarantee

that democracy is long-lasting and sustainable in the region.

17
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