The Primeiro Comando da Capital as the Outcome of Disorder and Mass Incarceration

Abstract

It focuses on the rise of the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC—First Command of the Capital), a gang that gained strength during the last decade by working as a sort of regulatory agency of criminal behavior in order to profit from the criminal activity of its members. The rise of the PCC in Sao Paulo and its activities and expansion inside and outside of the prisons can be better understood when we consider the environment in Sao Paulo’s criminal underworld in the city’s the poor neighborhoods at the start of the 1990s. Rather than the cause of the reduction in homicides, the creation of the PCC is one of the outcomes of this context of self-extermination and disorder in the criminal world, as well as an outcome of the actions and inaction of public policies at the time. One of the consequences of mass incarceration, together with the inability of authorities to control the day-to-day within the prisons, was the strengthening of prison gangs and the possibility of controlling criminal behavior in a new space.