Racism and Public Security: Roots of the problem and solutions
In Brazil, more Afro-Brazilians die from a violent death and face police brutality than the white people; they are also the majority of the prison population. Public security policies () have a discriminatory bias linked to skin color and reinforce a structural racism that dates back to the times of slavery and have never been effectively fought by the State or by Brazilian society.
These were the takeaways of the “Racism and Public Security” debate held by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation and Humanitas360, which brought together four experts from different fields to discuss the roots of the public security racial problem and possible solutions.
“In the last decade, there has been an overall reduction in lethal violence in Brazil, but if we compare homicide rates between Afro-Brazilians and everyone else, the conclusion is that there has been an increase in racial inequality in public security. What public policies are these that preserve the lives of some Brazilians and not the lives of others? Statistical data on violence is the most brutal evidence of Brazilian racism,” said University of São Paulo (USP) social scientist Samira Bueno, executive director of the Brazilian Forum on Public Security, which together with the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) publishes the Atlas of Violence.
According to the 2020 Atlas of Violence, between 2008 and 2018, homicide rates increased by 11.5% for Afro-Brazilians, while for all others there was a decrease of 12.9%. In 2018 alone, Afro-Brazilians – the sum of black and brown people, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) classification – represented 75.7% of homicide victims, with a homicide rate of 37.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants. Among non-black people (sum of white, Asian, and indigenous people) the rate was 13.9 per 100 thousand. That means that 2.7 Afro-Brazilians were killed for every non-black individual killed in 2018. Afro-Brazilian women represented 68% of the total number of women murdered in Brazil, with a mortality rate per 100 thousand inhabitants of 5.2, almost double when compared to non-black women.
“Blatantly visible in public security statistics, racial inequality is by far the most acute topic in Brazilian society and an anachronism in the 21st century. The culture of violence, which mainly victimizes Afro-Brazilians, must be addressed on several fronts, with public policies that fully support at-risk families,” said Hélio Santos, master in Finance and PhD in Administration from FEA-USP, one of the most respected socio-racial activists in Brazil.
According to the member of the first Council for Black People’s Rights (Conselho dos Direitos das Pessoas Negras), created by the São Paulo State Government in 1984, there is a growing politicization of public security issues within the police forces, among Federal and State Executives and Legislative Branches. “Defending more police and more armaments while having no preventive actions or scientific basis for the development of technically-based solutions, is like ice skating uphill,” he said. Hélio also defended better training and retraining of police officers and more power and efficiency to Internal Affairs and Whistleblower Programs to have less impunity in cases of police violence.
‘Police have imperfections, just like Brazilian society’
“Structural racism is at the heart of Brazilian society; it exists in every institution and in the police force,” said lawyer Elizeu Soares Lopes, who has a Graduate Degree in Constitutional and Administrative Law from the Escola Paulista de Direito and is the current head of the police Whistleblower Programs of the State of São Paulo. According to Elizeu, “51% of the Military Police of São Paulo are Afro-Brazilian; it is the institution that most employs Afro-Brazilians in Brazil.” Despite being called “Military Police”, it should not be confused with the Military Police for the Armed Forces, which are the Army Police of Brazil (Polícia do Exército), the Air Force Police (Polícia da Aeronáutica) and the Police Company of the Naval Battalion (Companhia de Polícia do Batalhão Naval). Its role is rather more similar to the state defense forces and National Guard in the United States, for example.
“The Military Police in the State of São Paulo have imperfections, but there is no command to differentiate citizens. [The police] is governed by the 1988 Constitution, obeys the law, and has rules and procedures. It is not correct to delegate the responsibility for this Brazilian construction (racism) to the police,” he said. According to him, building an environment for internal dialogue and putting the police more in touch with communities is fundamental for combating racism within the police force.
Technology can also be useful for monitoring police work, either with body cameras or recordings made by the citizens themselves. “Nowadays, the police officer’s job is increasingly more prominent, and hardly a flagrant case of abuse goes unnoticed because the population catches it on smartphone cameras,” said the Hélio, recalling the repercussions of a white North American police officer murdering African-American George Floyd, whose images traveled the world and provoked anti-racist protests in several cities of the United States and throughout the globe.
Samira agreed that Floyd’s death put the issue back on debate in several countries, but, according to the social scientist, “this violence happens every day in Brazil and does not generate the same emotional response because we are used to managing our conflicts with violence.”
‘Police forces need to recognize racism in order to fight it’
Historian Dudu Ribeiro, a Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) graduate who also holds a Graduate Degree in Strategic Public Policy Management from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), specified that “the historical processes in the country associated the idea of crimes, punishment, and justice with race. If this is not recognized, there is no way to combat racism in the public security system.”
He cited a Rede de Observatórios de Segurança survey as an example. The survey analyzed 12,600 events related to human rights violations in public security in five states (Bahia, Ceará, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo) based on news published by the media. “Racism was clearly identified as the cause in just 50 of those events. What do the other 12,550 cases explain? This survey shows that racism, despite existing, is not revealed,” he affirmed.
‘The Judiciary Branch reinforces the incarceration culture’
All guests criticized the high percentage of Afro-Brazilians in the Brazilian prison system. According to data from Infopen 2016 published on the Brazilian House of Representatives website, 61.7% of prisoners are black or brown, yet they represent 53.63% of the Brazilian population. Whites are 37.22% of the prison population, yet they are 45.48% of the country’s population.
“In Brazil, we react to crises by making certain behaviors crimes through criminal laws. We live from criminal law to criminal law, but we are not concerned with changing people’s behavior and adopting public policies that improve the quality of life in the communities,” criticized Samira Bueno. “Our focus is very much on police work, on police charters (organic laws), but the police are just one of the actors in public security. If we do not think of a national and local policy, we will not budge,” added the PhD in Public Administration and Government from the Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP).
Elizeu agreed. “One should not place all the blame and hope of solving the problem on one institution: the police force. The culture of incarceration needs to be reviewed; it has a lot to do with the Judiciary Branch’s performance, which is still resistant to alternatives to jail and prison sentences.”
“The judicial system should focus on recovery and reparation, but it ends up collaborating to provide criminal organizations with cheap labor,” said Dudu. In 20 years, the total Brazilian prison population has more than tripled and is already at approximately 800 thousand prisoners, placing the country in third place in the global ranking (behind the USA and China).
‘The drug policy stigmatizes and imprisons young Afro-Brazilians’
According to Dudu Ribeiro, co-founder and executive coordinator of the Afro-Brazilian Initiative for a New Drug Policy (Iniciativa Negra por uma Nova Política sobre Drogas), the drug policy in force is the most well-rounded framework of the Brazilian racial exclusion policy. “The drug policy legitimizes the federal government violence and incarcerates and stigmatizes Afro-Brazilians, especially the young ones from impoverished communities,” he said.
According to the historian, “the first Brazilian legislation that criminalized psychoactive substances explicitly stated that the objective was to curb their use among descendants of slaves, as if the whites did not also use drugs, as they still do today.”
Dudu, who has already been a member of Bahia’s State Drug Policy Council, sees a “real war on drugs” in Brazil, with serious consequences not only for those directly involved (traffickers, police, and users), but primarily on the population of the areas most affected by the confrontation between police and drug trafficking. “To get out of this situation, it is necessary to review the criminalization of drugs and create a regulated market for psychoactive substances. However, it is necessary to think about how to distribute balanced opportunities in this new market so as not to privilege those who have capital, power, and influence, and again exclude and exploit Afro-Brazilians and the poor,” he said.
The activist also defended “the creation of a kind of truth and justice commission to analyze the historical responsibilities of the actors involved in the war on drugs, to identify agents and victims, and to define reparations.”
To Samira Bueno (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública), the ban on drugs encourages illicit markets to be formed where disputes are resolved by force, encouraging violence. In 2019, the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) published an edition of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development, entirely dedicated to Brazil.
Hélio Santos added that drugs should be approached from the perspective of prevention, as a matter of public health and not of repression and incarceration. The President of the Brazilian Institute of Diversity (IBD) highlighted the importance of specific policies aimed at underprivileged youth. “There are 11 million young people in Brazil today who do not study or work, often due to lack of opportunity. Each year, more than 30,000 young people die in the country, mainly Afro-Brazilians and those from the most underprivileged classes. This is only possible due to the leniency of the legal and political worlds and of society itself,” he concluded.
‘Internal Affairs and Whistleblower Programs must act in real time to curb abuse’
When asked about effective actions taken by the Military Police of the State of São Paulo to combat racism in the police force, Elizeu Lopes mentioned some already in progress:
1. Strengthening of community police philosophy and strategies;
2. Implementation of thematic assemblies to discuss police activity with society;
3. Internal Affairs and Whistleblower Programs are present at the Operations Center of the Military Police of the State of São Paulo (COPOM) during street demonstrations and police operations to prevent abusive use of force in real time;
4. Constantly improving police training, at the hand of teachers committed to human rights and the adoption of anti-racist bibliographies, by authors such as Djamila Ribeiro and Hélio Santos.
Elizeu concluded by saying that it is necessary to make more room for Afro-Brazilian professionals in society to break stereotypes and reduce prejudice: “It is vital that police and society see more and more Afro-Brazilians in valued professions like doctors, scientists, congresspersons, actors, journalists, and businesspeople.”
Beatriz Kipnis has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Public Administration and Government (FGV-SP) and is an assistant coordinator of studies and debates at the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation.
Portuguese to English translation by Melissa Harkin & Todd Harkin (Harkin Translations).