NCJ Number
128956
Journal
Criminal Law Forum Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Dated: (Spring 1990) Pages: 389-425
Date Published
1990
Length
47 pages
Annotation
Information gathered from human rights investigations and other sources in 1986 and 1987 forms the basis of an analysis of the use of deadly force by the police and its role in social control in Argentina, Jamaica, and Brazil.
Abstract
These societies share both similarities and differences and are all democracies with a free press. Their police are protomilitary bureaucracies that are answerable formally to civilian law enforcement officials but that also have a large amount of customary discretion. Both official and unofficial statistics on the ratio of civilians killed to those wounded, the ratio of civilians killed to police killed, and the ratio of police killings to the total homicide rate indicate that the police are summarily executing suspects in routine, nonpartisan case. Nearly all the police killings are justified to the public as acts of self-defense. However, this abuse of deadly force is directed almost exclusively against anonymous, poor people and represents an extreme form of coercive social control. Experience from other countries suggests that authorities can limit and even prevent police violence, but this will not occur in these three countries as long as police use of deadly force represents a means of social control that is acceptable to both the elite and the masses. Tables and footnotes