From bureaucratic consolidation to structural devolution: Police death squads in Brazil

Abstract

An examination of the socio‐organizational roots of death squads in Brazil's military state and their persistence during the redemocratization period (post‐1985). Through several Brazilian case examples we explore a possible symbiosis between formal police systems and informal death squads, particularly death squads’ origins in, and connections to, the state and the criminal justice system. The thesis on devolution proposes that death squads are a product of a consequent ‐ if not fully intended ‐ process of state deconstruction, where part of the formal control system splits off, debureaucratizes, and increasingly carries out violence clandestinely and extralegally. Four sources of devolution are found: (a) in formal organization ‐ particularly in the bureaucratic centralization, specialization, and competition associated with a war model of policing; (b) an outgrowth of state‐related illegalities ‐ where devolution spawns further devolution into decentralization and loss of state control; which, in turn,...