The Law as a Necropolitical Tool: A Genealogy of Police Violence in Brazil

Abstract

This article explores the necropolitical foundations of police violence in Brazil via a genealogical approach of analysis of criminal codes, creation decrees, and other legal documents and insights from ethnographic research. In this paper I argue that antiblackness determines the role of the police in contemporary Brazil and has inscribed its place in law. Historically, the police had the legal duty to repress and punish enslaved people; but their role in imparting immediate justice persisted with expanded powers during the dictatorship and democracy’s social demands over the war on drugs. Through all these political and ideological transitions, the police have been resilient to change precisely because of their unique necropolitical power.