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6 - Coordinated Coexistence

The Consolidation of a Police–Gang Truce in São Paulo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2022

Hernán Flom
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Connecticut
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Summary

This chapter shows how partisan stability enabled police professionalization and the regulation of drug trafficking through coordinated coexistence in São Paulo. Following redemocratization in the early 1980s, São Paulo exhibited, like Rio de Janeiro, incoherent and unstable security policies that perpetuated the autonomy of a police force characterized by rampant corruption and brutality. However, the entrenchment of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) since the mid-1990s enabled it to implement and consolidate various initiatives to professionalize the police and reduce their autonomy. This in turn enabled a coordinated coexistence arrangement, including an implicit pact with the state’s most powerful drug gang: the First Command of the Capital (PCC). While the government has allowed this organization to expand its power in the prisons and the streets, the gang has mitigated police violence and maintained homicide rates in São Paulo among the lowest in the country.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Coordinated Coexistence
  • Hernán Flom, Trinity College, Connecticut
  • Book: The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America
  • Online publication: 18 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170710.006
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  • Coordinated Coexistence
  • Hernán Flom, Trinity College, Connecticut
  • Book: The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America
  • Online publication: 18 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170710.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Coordinated Coexistence
  • Hernán Flom, Trinity College, Connecticut
  • Book: The Informal Regulation of Criminal Markets in Latin America
  • Online publication: 18 August 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009170710.006
Available formats
×