Police Repression Research Articles

Mujeres movilizadas en el 68 uruguayo: el movimiento por la justicia y la paz social desde la teoría del framing

This article analyzes the demonstration organized in Montevideo on the 26th of September of 1968, by women who would later constitute the “Feminine Movement for Justice and Social Peace” (Movimiento Femenino por la Justicia y la Paz Social). For this purpose, the article builds on the Political Sociology and Political Science studies of social movements ―especially the framing theory―, as well as on studies which have analyzed women’s movements in 20th Century Latin America. The article concludes that the activists made a strategic use of the dominant values and beliefs existent in the cultural stock about women’s role. These were articulated in an interpretative frame which achieved the successful mobilization of new adherents, the spectators’ support and the press’s sympathy, through a frame alignment process. It also avoided police repression successfully, in an authoritarian context where it was expected that the law and order forces would unleash their violence against any expression of opposition to the government. Finally, taking into account that social movements contribute to enrich the cultural stock and repertoire of protest from one protest cycle to the next, we propose that this demonstration was one of the first ones to use silence as a form of protest associated with denouncing repressive actions of state authoritarianism in the Southern Cone.

BUSCA PESSOAL NO POLICAMENTO PREVENTIVO E REPRESSIVO. FUNDAMENTO CONSTITUCIONAL E STANDARDS PROBATÓRIOS AUTORIZADORES

The personal serch is used as a preventive and repressive policing measure. Decisions of the Superior Court of Justice limited its legitimacy to the envidentiary purpose and restricted the hypotheses characterizing the well-founded suspicion capable of motivating the Search. Through the use of deductive methodology, bibliographic and jurisprudential research, the reserach intends to investigate whether the personal search as a preventive police measure it is constitutional; if there is consistency in the judgments of the Superior Court of Justice and if it is possible to suggest objective elements that fulfill the evidentiary standard of well-founded suspicion required by the Code of Criminal Procedure. Objectives: 1. To analyze the constitutionality of the personal search as a preventive police measure. 2. Identify the main judgments of the Superior Courts on the personal search. 3. Suggest objective elements that fulfill the evidentiary standard of well-founded suspicion required by the Criminal Procedure Code. The conclusion is that the personal search is na importante tool for the realization of the fundamental right to public security and finds constitutional support to be used in the preventive and repressive scope. The situational factors of suspicious attitude, criminal rates and characteristics of the environment fulfill the evidentiary standard required by the Criminal Procedure Code.

Modeling Repressive Policing: Computational Analysis of Protocols from the Israeli State Commission of Inquiry into the October 2000 Events

This article addresses the gap between normative expectations of the right to protest in liberal democracies and the continued practice of repressive protest policing. The empirical literature has identified three types of factors explaining repressive policing: macro- or societal-level factors, meso-level factors relating to the police organization, and micro-level factors pertaining to specific events. Yet these factors provide only a fragmented understanding of the phenomenon. In this article, we put forward a novel three-tiered methodology of scaled reading, which is able to examine all these explanations together. We use scaled reading to analyze the protocols of the Or Commission of Inquiry, which investigated lethal clashes between the Israeli police and Israel’s Arab minority in October 2000. Through large-scale algorithmic topic modeling, we found that all types of empirical explanations of repressive policing co-exist within the October events. The mid-scale analysis revealed that no type of explanation exclusively belongs to a specific group of actors. The small-scale reading of the most representative documents for each topic demonstrated that this coexistence of mechanisms is also present within single testimonies. Together, our findings challenge existing empirical categories and illuminate repressive policing as a nonlinear, nonbinary, noncausal, and nonunitary phenomenon. These insights help make sense of the phenomenon’s persistence in deeply divided societies.

Visualizing Berio’s Sinfonia: Choreographing Animation for Indeterminate Narratives

In 1968, a year of massive political and cultural upheaval, Luciano Berio composed a score that would shape his legacy. Entitled Sinfonia, which literally means sounding together, the symphony was sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King. Heralded as “the ultimate pre-postmodernist musical palimpsest” (Service, 2012). Sinfonia reverberates with the political assassinations and massive protests punctuated by police repression that marked 1968. In late 2019, I was offered an animated projection commission with a primary voice in choosing a piece for live symphonic performance/projection. After some researching, I found Berio’s Sinfonia. It had what I was looking for - a “contemporary” piece, it resisted illustration, linear narrative and 19th century romanticism while eschewing the rigid formality of serialism. Instead, it embraced two core Modernist principles – fragmentation and use of the archive. Berio quoted/sampled disparate chunks of literature, music, and events of 1968 in the service of the political and the poetic to discover unity in the heterogeneous. His score seemed ripe for visual interpretation - and exposition - with animation as the prime driver. Following Berio’s lead, I chose visual sampling as my entre and turned to Google. By animating in and out of iconic (and lesser known) images in the orb of 1968, I created a commensurate puzzle piece that mirrored the suggested avant-garde intent I found in Sinfonia – “Where now? Who now? When now?” (Beckett, 1965, p. 291).

La répression, facteur d’annihiliation du terrorisme ou de sa radicalisation ? Le cas du conflit basque

"Faced with a terrorist movement, the authoritarian or democratic power deploys a repressive response. At certain times, it was massive against the armed group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). To study its effects on the group’s operationality, we used two original databases (ETA actions, arrests of its activists). Statistical analysis underlines that the most intense deployments of police repression had a radicalising effect on the Basque national liberation movement, whether under authoritarian or democratic regimes until at least the 1980s, and that this radicalisation phenomenon does not occur at the end of a protest cycle as a backlash against its exhaustion. The effectiveness of repression is only real when it is not only police-related but also judicial, and when it is supported by transnational cooperation. Keywords: Counter-terrorism, Basque country, ETA, legal and illegal repression, statistical analysis. "

INTRODUCTION: BLACK LIVES MATTER IN CONTEXT

This special issue of Mobilization collects five research articles about the Black Lives Movement (BLM) plus two essays by the editors. This introductory essay provides the broad context of the BLM. It shows how the protests and movement demands of 2020 after the horrific murder of George Floyd were tied to the protests and organizing of 2014-16 which, in turn, built on at least two decades of prior organizing. Protests about police violence are central to Black movements because police repression enforces White supremacy.

Social Movement Gains and Losses: Dilemmas of Arena Creation

Social movements never entirely win or lose, nor do they suddenly appear or disappear. Just as their component parts recombine and continue in other forms, so movements have dozens of impacts of various kinds. To make sense of this complexity we propose examining the outcomes of political interactions for a variety of players (including individuals) across a range of arenas. Given the acknowledged tradeoffs and dilemmas of collective action, we would expect packages of outcomes to appear together sometimes; for example, gains in street mobilization may lead to losses in the form of a damaged reputation or police repression. The first step to explaining such patterns is to identify and name them. We examine one of these outcome patterns, the arena-ownership package, through the case of Seattle's historic $15 per hour wage law passed in 2014, the first ever in a major U.S. city. The players who crafted the bill included an avowed Socialist, the owner of Seattle's iconic Space Needle tower, many representatives of the city's labor movement, and the newly elected Democratic Mayor Ed Murray. These diverse players moved through a series of complex arenas to arrive at the legislative outcome. In this case, we find players who create new arenas, rather than only using already-existing arenas. This move is associated with a typical package of gains and losses: increased control for the player on the one hand, but corresponding losses and risks—the alienation of excluded players and increased perception of responsibility. The creating player is blamed for the arena's failures as well as credited with its successes.

Public fear of protesters and support for protest policing: An experimental test of two theoretical models*

AbstractAs protests erupted across the United States in recent years over racialized issues (e.g., Black Lives Matter and Confederate monuments), so too did questions about when and how police should respond. Understanding public attitudes toward protest policing is important for police legitimacy and policy. One theory is that citizens are willing to trade civil liberties, such as the right to assemble, for security, and thus disruptive or dangerous protest tactics should increase support for police control by elevating public fear. Another theory is that citizens view protests through the lens of group position, and thus, they should be more supportive of repression when protest goals conflict with preexisting racial beliefs and threaten racial interests. To test these theories, we embedded an experiment in a nationwide survey fielded in 2020 after George Floyd's killing sparked the broadest protests in U.S. history. We randomized protest tactics (e.g., weapon carrying) and goals, as well as other contextual characteristics (e.g., protest size). We found that the public generally opposed repressive protest policing. Certain protest tactics, however, increased support for repression by elevating fear. Protest goals (e.g., pro‐Black Lives Matter and pro‐immigrants) also impacted support for repression, but the effect depended on respondents’ racial beliefs.

Tunisia’s “Al-Ahyaa Al-Sha’Biya”: Socioeconomic Grievances, Mobilisation, and Repression

This paper will look into the dynamics of police repression and violence against contentious actors during the latest wave of protests in Tunisia. It will argue that there is a continuity between the grievances of the recent protests and those expressed during the 2011 revolution, including corruption, access to socio-economic rights and individual and collective freedoms. The paper will also highlight the role of the youth, particularly those from marginalised neighbourhoods, in leading the protests, positioning them as the main targets of police violence and arbitrary arrests. Finally, it will shed light on the recent police repression and violation of individual freedoms, showing that despite being considered as one of the main achievements of the Tunisian’s revolution, civil liberties remain under threat.

Sociological and spatial dynamics of an evolving Parisian open drug scene: the case of the “Colline du Crack”

Purpose In November 2019, an open drug scene, commonly called “Colline du crack” and located in Paris was forcibly closed after 10 years of existence. This paper aims to understand how that space has evolved over the years to become a major hub for drug use. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a qualitative approach that included interviews with 52 people who use drugs (PWUD) and 54 field professionals and ethnographic observations. The authors asked questions about the evolution of the major sites of crack visibility in Paris and about social representations related to these spaces. They compared their datas with datas drawn from gray literature. Findings La Colline emerged on an isolated slope, away from police repression and local anti-crack organizations. In the beginning, it was a discrete, communal space regulated by PWUD. Starting in 2015, social transformations in the neighborhood turned la Colline into a central hub for dealing and using crack. La Colline became an open scene which led to its evacuation in 2019. Originality/value This paper contributes to literature on community building of drug consumers. The authors are also using a wide variety of methodological tools.

Reparative justice: The final stage of decolonization

Taking inspiration from Neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism, by Kwame Nkrumah of the thesis by Lenin that Imperialism (is) the highest stage of capitalism, I postulate that reparative justice is the final stage of decolonization (Nkrumah 1968). Based on the argument in Counter-Colonial Criminology that imperialism is the general form of all types of deviance in the sense that all acts of deviance seek to invade and colonize the private and public spaces of others, I conclude that reparative justice programs addressing the legacies of crimes committed by empires and corporations would signal the final stages of decolonization. Contrary to the conventional assumptions in criminology that poverty and powerlessness are the major causes of deviance, I suggest that power, not powerlessness, is a more significant cause of all deviance by the powerful and by the relatively powerless alike because the relatively powerless prey on those even more powerless in the community while the majority of the poor remain overwhelmingly law abiding and the rich get away with bloody murder, as Steve Box and Jeffrey Reiman theorized (Box, 1993; Reiman and Leighton, 2020). Accordingly, the preferred societal response to deviance should be reparative rather than punitive justice in keeping with the decolonization paradigm in criminology and justice towards a more humane world devoid of immigration control, repressive policing, the prison-industrial complex, racism-sexism-imperialism, militarism, homophobia, the war on drugs, capital punishment, homelessness, illiteracy, and without state power as class domination to make way for the principles of taking from all according to their abilities and giving to all according to their needs (Pfohl, 1994).

And the Heat Goes On: Police Repression and the Modalities of Power

Among security institutions, police occupy a unique position. In addition to specializing in the repression of dissent, police monitor society and enforce order. Yet within research studying state repression, how police institutions are used and deployed to control domestic threats remain under-explored, particularly as it relates to the dual functionality just described. In this study, we develop and test an explanation of police repression accounting for the bifurcation of Mann’s two modalities of state power: infrastructural power and despotic power. Infrastructural power allocates police resources to surveil dissidents and preemptively limit dissent’s emergence or escalation. Police deploy despotic power through repressive responses to political threats. Empirically, we employ unique data to investigate police repression and the modalities of power in Guatemala. To analyze how shifting the balance between infrastructural and despotic power affects police repression, we isolate damage occurring from an earthquake that exogenously reshaped the landscape of infrastructural power. Results affirm the role of infrastructural power in regulating the despotic power of the state. Where local infrastructure was most affected by the earthquake, the security apparatus lost the capacity to surveil nascent movements and predict their activity, thereby providing opportunity for dissidents to mobilize and forcing police to (over-)react rather than shutdown resistance preemptively. However, the intensity of state violence recedes as the state recovers from the infrastructural damage and regains its control of local district.

Encounters at Manuscript Preparation: Inquiry in Conflict’s Aftermath

This exercise of the researcher self explores relationships materializing in manuscript preparation, suggests that conflict-site research is more of a social and affective experience, from proposal to manuscript preparation, than most researchers realize. Outside of clinical and ameliorative approaches, little educational research focuses on ongoing, unresolved conflict. Even less sheds light on the experience of the conflict-site researcher. Here, I show how texts of other conflict-site writers accompanied my process of manuscript preparation, just as activist teachers I observed during the field work phase stood among peers when protesting and facing police repression. Correspondingly, I discuss an intertextual approach of reaching out to others and drawing on published stories while composing the main narrative of my manuscript, Movements on the streets and in schools. I call this practice conrading based on my turning to Anna Tsing and W. G. Sebald who had turned to the stories of Joseph Conrad in their books. As I called upon other authors who wrote about conflict in my assembling a social movement-based manuscript, moving forward, I suggest the uptake of social and textual relationships will become important when researching in times and spaces of pandemic, state repression and institutional defunding.

The triple-sidedness of “I can’t breathe”

On Juneteenth, Friday, June 19, 2020, unionized workers of the Durham Workers Assembly of Durham, North Carolina, held a rally in front of Durham Police Headquarters to “defund the police” in support of the national Black Lives Matter movement protesting in massive numbers in the streets of US cities and being met with overwhelming police repression. Black Lives Matter marches in the streets of cities and towns of the United States continued, as the world looked on.

THE URBAN POOR in DHAKA: PERSPECTIVES ON THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

The urban poor experience serious discontents, harassment, eviction, police repression and local goons threatening when using urban space for living and livelihood purposes. This study pursues to understand the poor people’s negotiation strategies with different powerful agents who occupy money, muscleman and political affiliation. Following a mixed method approach, this study investigates the two biggest slums in Dhaka as case studies. Findings show that urban poor have to build different social-contract relations with various local agents as survival mechanisms while economic activities using urban space are considered to be illegal in Bangladesh. The role of the state is somewhat ambiguous in this regard. On the one hand, the state is not evicting the poor permanently from the city but it is repatriating them on other grounds and, on the other hand, it permits hundreds of informal intermediary agents to work for sustaining informal urban settlements for the poor people. We argue that these distinctive socio-structural arrangements in Dhaka city is hindering poor people from getting united and claiming their rights to the city while also not providing them proper opportunities to fully appropriate the urban space. These socio-economic relations need to be considered in order to make a just city for all, from the RTC perspective.

Sonic Governance: Culturalization and Criminalization of Funk Carioca in Rio de Janeiro

Music and sound have long served as symbols of Brazil, and contests over public sound amplify contests over space, governance, and biopolitics. In anticipation of hosting the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, sound became an important and contested arena of politics in Rio de Janeiro. I discuss how aurality becomes a political force through the emergence of two distinct forms of sonic politics around local popular music, funk carioca: criminalization and, what I call, culturalization. While criminalization mutes and controls sound through police repression, culturalization creates a purified sound and appeals to law to claim legitimacy as “culture.” Funk carioca’s criminalization in favelas and culturalization in the formal city reveals how different modes of governance are spatialized within the city. The paradox of criminalization and culturalization of funk suggests coexistence of authoritarian and liberal democratic modes of governance in the city.

Pandemic sex workers’ resilience: COVID-19 crisis met with rapid responses by sex worker communities

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the inequality of social support systems worldwide, revealing the gaps that further marginalize vulnerable people. Despite the fact that sex workers are adversely affected by the pandemic, they are excluded from government relief and protection programmes as well as health services. Sex worker communities have developed rapid response strategies to support their peers in overcoming these challenges. Sex worker organizations all over the world have been working alongside other groups and communities to advocate for income and health support for all, and an end to repressive policing and state-sanctioned violence.

Da guerra às drogas à guerra ao vírus: necropolítica e resistência na Cracolândia

O artigo tem por objetivo analisar as formas de resistência presentes na Cracolândia paulistana diante da pandemia da Covid-19 e de suas consequências. Para tanto, nos valemos de documentos públicos e artigos acadêmicos sobre os temas abordados no sentido de descrever as ações de resistência, por parte de militantes e outros frequentadores daquele território. A análise dessas ações, ante a repressão policial e o ataque midiático à Cracolândia, foi empreendida tendo por referencial teórico as ideias de Achille Mbembe. Vimos como, apesar de marcados pela necropolítica, os usuários de crack, com militantes de diversas entidades e coletivos, negam diariamente, por vezes de modo festivo, o necropoder. Resistem por suas vidas com táticas de contenção da letalidade materializadas em oficinas de autocuidado, distribuição de alimentos e iniciativas de ajuda mútua.

Does Police Repression Spur Everyday Cooperation? Evidence from Urban India

Does routinized police repression spark or quell everyday cooperation within frequently repressed communities? This important question has been neglected by comparative studies of policing, which h...

A violência virtual contra vítimas mulheres de Belém/Pará

A violência contra mulher é um problema social relacionado a questões históricas de desigualdade de poder entre homens e mulheres, cuja desconstrução e contenção esbarram na relutância das práticas e nos saberes culturais que impedem à aplicação e efetividade das leis de proteção feminina. Este trabalho objetiva estudar a violência virtual cometida contra mulheres de Belém/Pará, nos anos de 2016 a 2018, por meio da análise dos boletins de ocorrência registrados por vítimas do sexo feminino na Divisão de Prevenção e Repressão a Crimes Tecnológicos da Polícia Civil bem como nas demais Delegacias da cidade. Para análise dos dados utilizou-se a técnica de estatística descritiva de dados. Os resultados apontam que há um crescimento da violência contra mulher de Belenense, todavia no ciberespaço esse ritmo é mais acelerado. Constata-se também predominância da violência patrimonial como o dano mais infringido às vítimas. As conclusões desta pesquisa permitem afirmar (a) que a violência contra mulher de Belém não reflete o perfil nacional das pesquisas onde a violência física está em primeiro lugar; (b) impera a violência patrimonial no ciberespaço, onde mulheres de classes sociais C e D, oriundas de bairros “centrais” representam maioria das vítimas.