Structural Predictors of Brazilian Police Violence

This article explores the nature of police violence in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area in contemporary Brazil during the last two decades of the twentieth century. First, the article reviews theories and empirical research within general sociology and by Brazilianist/Brazilian scholars on the nature of violence, and policing. Next, the article reviews three structural theories of police violence developed as part of Western sociology but applied to Brazil—the reaction-to-crime, the reaction-to-violence, and the threat models. Lastly, using occurrence data on reports of police excessive use of force (n = 4018) from the University of São Paulo Núcleo de Estudos de Violéncia (Center for the Study of Violence) database on Gross Human Rights Violations, these three theories are tested with time series regression techniques through the regression of municipality rates of police violence on crime rates, concentrations of Afro-Brazilians and rural state migrants, and poverty indicators. The findings offer no support for threat explanations. The findings do support a partial reaction-to-crime explanation for police violence with rates of assault and robbery having a positive relationship to rates of police violence. Rates of homicide were found to have a negative relationship, indicating that homicide may be addressed by official policing practices whereas police may react to robbery and assault with “unofficial” violence.