Mortal doubles: Youth, crime and the police in Brazil

Abstract

Police violence and the killing of suspects are ubiquitous in Brazil, with most victims being young people from the urban periphery. Policing in Brazil has been discussed in terms of postcolonial and authoritarian continuities, the social construction of criminal identities, and racialized forms of citizenship. Drawing on documentary evidence and narratives from inmates at a juvenile prison in Salvador, Bahia, this article explores police violence from the victims’ perspectives. It argues for an understanding of police (ab)use of force that considers both structural causes and the personal nature of police–suspect encounters, where the line between committing and fighting crime is increasingly blurred. The abuse and killing of juvenile offenders are conceived as the culmination of interpersonal and intergroup skirmishes between adversaries caught up in a spiral of mimetic rivalry, in which violence has become an end in itself.