Police: Professional Identity and Social Representations in Brazil

Abstract

Professional identities and policemen practices The research in the beginning of these reflections had, as the main scope, the relations between professional identity and police practices aiming to understand the relation between police and society. 1,2 It had started based on two presuppositions: From the beginning of the investigation a question oriented this following reflection: where to localize the "who is who" from the police segments and in relation to other segments of society? Are they internal or external to the public security? Who would be the "alter" for the military policeman and vice versa? How his identity would be defined: by contrast with the civilian or with the policeman of the other corporation? The methodological path was the Social Representation analysis: the ones that were constructed by the policeman about