Killing And Letting Die Depicting A Brazilian Policing Duality

Killing And Letting Die Depicting A Brazilian Policing Duality Presented by: Mr. Dal Santo Date: 7 June, 2022 Outline - - Letting die • Homicide rates • Who is killed? • (Lack of) State responses to homicide Killing • Police deadly action in numbers • Who is killed... by the police? • A legal and legitimate(d) mechanism? - How to make sense of this? - Contradictions, complexities, challenges Homicide In Numbers - Nearly 60,000 homicides/year since 2012 - BR homicide rate over 5x higher than the World average one (5.78) - Central America: 25.9 - South Africa: 34 - South America: 24.2 - Mexico: 25.7 - Africa: 13 - Colombia: 25 - USA: 4.9 - Argentina: 7 - Western Europe: 1 - Cuba: 5 Who Is Killed? - Killable Lives? • Young  50% aged between 15 and 29 • Black  3 out of 4 are Black • Men  91.2% men - Territorialization • Poorer regions in the country  North, Northeast, and Midwest: > 35  Southeast and South: < 25 • Metropolitan areas • Favelas (Lack of) State responses - Homicide In The Br Prison Population • Then...  1983: +-20% • Now...  2014: +-10% - ‘Homicide Elucidation Rate' • Germany and Japan  ~95% • USA  ~65% • UK and Canada  ~80% • Argentina  >50% • Brazil • 5-8% Passive Domain - Tens of thousands of poor, Black, and marginalized people left to die annually • Killable lives: unprotected • Homicides: non- investigated; unpunished Police Deadly Action In Numbers - Police killings in Brazil (2009-2019) - Measuring the excess? • Civilians killed vs. Civilians wounded by the police 2005 Killed 278 Wounded 352 • 2006 495 370 2007 377 341 2008 371 283 2009 524 350 2010 493 312 2011 438 314 2012 546 364 2013 334 392 2014 317 280 Police killed by civilians vs Civilians killed by the police  70 civilians vs 1 policeman killed on duty • Representation of police lethality in the totality of homicide numbers  13.3% in Brazil  30.3% in Rio de Janeiro Beyond The Trigger Pulled - A legal and legitimate(d) mechanism? • Resistance reports: judicial process that frame these killings as lawful • Policemen who kill are not punished - they're barely investigated (Veranı 1996, Cano & Fragoso 2000, Misse 2011, Zaccone 2015) • Police inquiries dropped before any charge is filed • When filed, not punished • Investigates the dead, not the deaths • Officialized death penalty (Dal Santo 2020) Active Domain - BR state also actively kills thousands of poor, Black, marginalized people every year • Police action: killings • Legal action: framing killings as lawful Necro Politics - 'Subjugation of life to the power of death' (Mbembe 2003) - Sovereignty • Not an abstract, democratic consensus achieved through communicative processes, but actual 'power and capacity to dictate who is able to live and who must die' (Mbembe 2003: 67) - 'Sovereign' right to kill in colonial times • Not subject to legal or institutional rules • 'External' dimension? Disputed/recently occupied territory; against the other, the colonized - Contemporary times (in BR) • Police apparatus + legal arrangements: killing its very people in the realm of legality • Internal dimension? Within own borders, undisputed territories: against own citizens Contradictions, Complexities, Challenges - - Challenges For Knowledge Production • Measuring 'punitiveness' • 'Punishment and society' scholarship and police killings • Police killings as a form of punishment? Questions For Political Praxis • Left-realism • Abolitionism Concluding Remarks - - - Letting die: passive instance • Police does not protect (marginalized) lives • Police does not investigate murders (of marginalized deaths) • People are not held accountable for killing (marginalized people) Killing: active instance • Police kills marginalized lives • Police investigates the (marginalized) dead By framing police killings as lawful, Brazilian state holds accountable... the dead • Centrality of necro politics in the governance of the Brazilian society