The Illusion of Peace?
Understanding São Paulo's Violence Decline
Contrary to many stereotypes, homicide rates have declined dramatically in the state and city of São Paulo, Brazil. From war-time homicide rates in the late 1990s, deaths from homicide have fallen by whopping 74% between 2001 and 2008. There is much debate about what might lie behind this surprising drop. Explanations include better investment in social policies, acceleration of the economy and a reduced share of young people in the population. Alternatively, could better gun control laws and changes in policing explain the new peace? Others suggest that the criminal group, Primeiro Comando da Capital, has gained a temporary monopoly of violence and reduced the need to kill rivals. Two experts will share their views on what lies behind this surprising violence decline in São Paulo and draw potential lessons for policy making.
Dr Graham Denyer Willis
University Lecturer in Development and Latin American Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge
&
Dr Maria Fernanda Tourinho Peres
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine Department, University of São Paulo Medical School
The event is chaired by Professor Manuel Eisner, Director of the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
The seminar is followed by a discussion and refreshments.
All welcome!
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dr Graham Denyer Willis
Biography
Graham Denyer Willis is University Lecturer in Development and Latin American Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow, Queens' College. Focussing on urbanisation, governance and security in cities of the Global South, his work has been published in World Development, Latin American Research Review among other peer-reviewed journals. His first book, The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil was published by the University of California Press in 2015. As a dissertation it won three awards. His current research examines how these same dynamics are being transposed to the internet and social media spaces.
Abstract
The Regulation of Life and Death in São Paulo
In this talk I examine the empirical practice of enforcement of who can die and who cannot in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I draw on ethnographic research carried out between 2009 and 2012 with homicide and other detectives, evidence from communities controlled by this city's organised crime group -known as the PCC-, and data from punishment records of this group, to illustrate which rules are observed and by whom, when it comes to violent death. I detail how this organisation decides when and why individuals can be killed, how this happens in the historically violent parts of the city, and how the influence of this organised crime group is unexceptional and largely uncontested in homicide investigations. I argue that the PCC's regulation of life and death in the historically abandoned parts of cities conversely empowers the state's claim to have reduced homicides in the city.
Dr Maria Fernanda Tourinho Peres
Biography
Abstract