CRASSH

For scholars grappling with Brazil’s nascent democracy, the state of the country’s police institutions presents a complex question. Decades after the opening of the political system, Brazil’s police continue to be implicated in myriad of illegal activities and violence. This paper explores the work of the Civil Police in São Paulo during this contentious period of institutional and socio-political change. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2009, the paper accompanies 18 civil police in their daily work on the reception plantão of a São Paulo Civil Police precinct as they respond to flagrante crimes, interact with the Military Police and deal with citizens filing crime reports. This paper argues that the Civil Police precinct is a conflicted institution engaged in a troubled and uncertain transition. Civil Police officers demonstrate an intimate awareness and recognition of new intra-state accountability institutions. Yet, while Civil Police are accepting new boundaries on their power and discretion, they are constrained in their ability to complete their work according to the expectations and guidelines of the ‘democratic’ rule of law. The existence of a number of institutional, financial and social constraints that limit the breadth, depth and fluidity of police work has meant that police have been obliged to utilize informality in order to be occupationally successful by legal standards. Consequently, Civil Police resort to practices such as witness and victim statement doctoring, fact omission and manufacture, and the manipulation of evidence to create cases that can be positively adjudicated. The result of their work is a product that appears diligent, logical and congruent with legal standards but which is inherently reflective of the extant conflict between entrenched constraints and acquiescence to new sources of accountability.