UPPS and the “Criminalization” of Favelas A Challenge to the Comprehension of the Notion of “Public Space” in Brazil

Abstract

Because of the high levels of violence practiced by the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro State (Brazil), especially if its lethality is taken into consideration, the Pacifying Police Units - Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) in Portuguese - were created in 2008 to work in some favelas (slums or shanty towns) of the state’s capital, the city of Rio de Janeiro. This form of policing became the object of attention of several social scientists due to its apparently less violent action in these specific urban spaces, which are historically marked by a social stigma and constitute a special target for police action.

In this thesis, we analyze some of the research work that emphasized the UPPs’ characteristics as possibilities for a new and less violent police. It is argued that, despite the features that make the UPPs to be apparently less violent, it is necessary to take into account several other aspects that sociologically explain the police action in Rio de Janeiro and the UPPs.

The social construction of Brazilian citizenship and public space affects the way Brazilians build the notion of equality between individuals and social groups, relating it to similarity between themselves and accepting as natural the unequal treatment given by the state’s institutions. This legal and juridical culture, associated to the new economic and financial context that the city of Rio de Janeiro has been going through in the last years, refers to the necessity of state control over some favelas to be able to increase the value of such urban spaces, through land speculation, in order to achieve a surplus-value by implementing new economic and lucrative activities. This state policy is heavily based on “pacifying” the favelas through the politics of security, in which police play a major and important role.

Therefore, the thesis begins by offering an explanation of the Brazilian views of public space and citizenship, resorting to some social scientists studies that dealt with the specifics of those notions in Brazil. Then we elucidate how a documentary analysis was made explaining how the UPPs are understood in Brazil. Later, dissertating about the historical development of favelas and police in Rio de Janeiro, explaining the conjuncture in which the UPPs were implemented and how they are understood.

Yet, in our research, we consider that the UPPs are not breaking away from the paradigm of the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro State, but using a different practice to give continuity to a traditional function of policing (repression) and a process that one could call of “criminalization” of favelas.