Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-l4dxg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-04T00:43:07.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building Criminal Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Drug Gangs in Rio de Janeiro and Recife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Michael Jerome Wolff
Michael Jerome Wolff*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Why do drug gangs develop sophisticated authority functions in some places and not in others? Comparing two Brazilian cities, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, this article argues that territorially embedded informal authority structures from earlier times, coupled with sporadic and extremely violent policing, encouraged drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro to develop authoritative functions and residents to acquiesce to them. In Recife, by contrast, drug gangs inherited diffuse and territorially independent authority structures and confronted a much less lethally violent police force. Consequently, they failed to find common cause with local residents, and their organizational development was truncated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 21 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amorim, Carlos. 2003. CV_PCC: a irmandade do crime. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record.Google Scholar
Arias, Desmond. 2006. Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Blake, Damion. 2013. Shadowing the State: Violent Control and the Social Power of Jamaican Garrison Dons. Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research 8: 56–75.Google Scholar
Brezina, Timothy. 2002. Assessing the Rationality of Criminal and Delinquent Behavior. In Rational Choice and Criminal Behavior: Recent Research and Future Challenges, ed. Piquero, Alex R. and Tibbetts, Stephen G.. New York: Routledge. 241–64.Google Scholar
Cano, Ignacio, 2012. “Os donos do morro”: uma avaliação exploratória do impacto das Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública.Google Scholar
Cano, Ignacio, and Massini, Nelson. 1997. Letalidade da ação policial no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto de Estudos da Religião (ISER).Google Scholar
Diniz, Eli, 1982. Voto e máquina política: patronagem e clientelismo no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.Google Scholar
Dowdney, Luke. 2003. Crianças do tráfico: um estudo de caso de crianças em violěncia armada organizada no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2003. Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. American Political Science Review 97, 1: 75–90.Google Scholar
Felbab-Brown, Vanda. 2010. Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Brodwyn. 2008. A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Jim. 2013. Police Involved Shooting Statistics: a One-Year Summary. Jim Fisher True Crime. http://www.jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/01/police-involved-shootings-2011-annual.html. Accessed June 19, 2014.Google Scholar
Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP). 2013. Anuário brasileiro de segurança pública. 7th ed. São Paulo: FBSP. http://www.forumseguranca.org.br/produtos/anuario-brasileiro-de-seguranca-publica/7a-edicao Google Scholar
Freitas, Alexandre S. 2005. Fundamentos para uma sociologia crítica da formação humana: um estudo sobre as redes associacionistas da sociedade civil. Doctoral thesis, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.Google Scholar
Gambetta, Diego. 1993. The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gay, Robert. 1994. Popular Organization and Democracy: A Tale of Two Favelas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff. 2001. No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Government of Rio de Janeiro. 2014. History. UPP website. www.upprj.com/index.php/historico_us. Accessed June 19, 2014.Google Scholar
The Guardian. 2013. Iceland's Armed Police Make First Ever Fatal Shooting. Dec. 2. www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/iceland-armed-police-shoot-man-dead-first-time. Accessed February 11, 2015.Google Scholar
The Independent. 2009. Death to Undesirables: Brazil's Murder Capital. May 15. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/death-to-undesirables-brazils-murder-capital-1685214.html. Accessed June 19, 2014.Google Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilcullen, David. 2009. The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lima, William da Silva. 1991. Quatrocentros contra um: uma história do Comando Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Editora ISER.Google Scholar
Leeds, Elizabeth. 1996. Cocaine and Parallel Polities in the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local-level Democratization. Latin American Research Review 31, 3: 47–83.Google Scholar
Macědo, Andréia de Oliveira. 2012. “Polícia, quando quer, faz!”: análise da estrutura de governança do “Pacto pela Vida” de Pernambuco. Master's thesis, Department of Sociology, Universidade de Brasília.Google Scholar
Magalhães, Paulo. 2008. A polícia na história do Brasil. Mato Grosso du Sul: Brasil Verdade.Google Scholar
Misse, Michel. 1999. Malandros, marginais e vagabundos. A acumulação social da violěncia no Rio de Janeiro. Doctoral thesis, Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Nobrega, José Maria. 2012. Homicídios no Nordeste: dinâmica, relações causais, e desmistificação da violěncia homicida. Campina Grande: Editora da Universidade Federal de Campina Grande.Google Scholar
Oliveira, Luciano. 1987. Sua excelěncia o comissário: a polícia enquanto justiça informal das classes populares no Grande Recife. Revista Brasileira de Estudos Criminais 11, 44: 279–300.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 2000. Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Pacto pela Vida. 2013. Agosto registra o menor índice de homicídios dos últimos anos. September 3. www.pactopelavida.pe.gov.br/agosto-registra-o-menor-indice-de-homicidiosdos-ultimos-anos. Accessed June 19, 2014.Google Scholar
Penglase, Ben. 2008. The Bastard Child of the Dictatorship: the Comando Vermelho and the Birth of Narcoculture in Rio de Janeiro. Luso-Brazilian Review 45, 1: 118–45.Google Scholar
Sherman, Lawrence W. 1995. The Police. In Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control, ed. Wilson, James Q. and Petersilia, Joan. San Francisco: ICS Press.Google Scholar
Stergios, Skaperdas.. 2001. The Political Economy of Organized Crime: Providing Protection When the State Does Not. Economics of Governance 2: 173–202.Google Scholar
Smith, David J. 2007. The Foundations of Legitimacy. In Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: International Perspectives, ed. Tyler, Tom R.. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 30–58.Google Scholar
Souza Pinheiro, Alvaro. 2009. Irregular Warfare: Brazil's Fight against Criminal Urban Guerrillas. Report. Joint Special Operations University, Sept. 8.Google Scholar
Sousa Silva, Eliana. 2012b. Testemunhos da maré. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1985. War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Evans, Peter, Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 169–87.Google Scholar
Zaluar, Alba, and Barcellos, Cristovão. 2013. Mortes prematuras e conflito armado pelo domínio das favelas no Rio de Janeiro. Revista Brasileira de Ciěncias Sociais 28, 81 (February): 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaluar, Alba, and Siqueira Conceição, Isabel. 2007. Favelas sob o controle das milícias no Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo em Perspectiva 21, 2 (July–December): 89–101.Google Scholar