Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

We hold many assumptions about police work-that it is the responsibility of the state, or that police officers are given the right to kill in the name of public safety or self-defense. But in The Killing Consensus, Graham Denyer Willis shows how in São Paulo, Brazil, killing and the arbitration of "normal" killing in the name of social order are actually conducted by two groups-the police and organized crime-both operating according to parallel logics of murder. Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, Willis's book traces how homicide detectives categorize two types of killing: the first resulting from "resistance" to police arrest (which is often broadly defined) and the second at the hands of a crime "family' known as the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). Death at the hands of police happens regularly, while the PCC's centralized control and strict moral code among criminals has also routinized killing, ironically making the city feel safer for most residents. In a fractured urban security environment, where killing mirrors patterns of inequitable urbanization and historical exclusion along class, gender, and racial lines, Denyer Willis's research finds that the city's cyclical periods of peace and violence can best be understood through an unspoken but mutually observed consensus on the right to kill. This consensus hinges on common notions and street-level practices of who can die, where, how, and by whom, revealing an empirically distinct configuration of authority that Denyer Willis calls sovereignty by consensus.

Homicide --- Homicide investigation --- Police --- Organized crime --- Femicide --- Offenses against the person --- Violent deaths --- Criminal investigation --- Cops --- Gendarmes --- Law enforcement officers --- Officers, Law enforcement --- Officers, Police --- Police forces --- Police officers --- Police service --- Policemen --- Policing --- Criminal justice, Administration of --- Criminal justice personnel --- Peace officers --- Public safety --- Security systems --- Crime syndicates --- Organised crime --- Crime --- Legal status, laws, etc. --- Homicide - Brazil - São Paulo --- Homicide investigation - Brazil - São Paulo --- Police - Brazil - São Paulo --- Organized crime - Brazil - São Paulo --- brazil crime. --- brazil drug trade. --- brazil. --- brazilian favela. --- brazilian gangs. --- brazilian homicide. --- brazilian mafia. --- brazilian mob. --- brazilian police. --- cops brazil. --- crime in sao paolo. --- crime. --- criminal justice brazil. --- criminology. --- crooked cops brazil. --- drug war brazil. --- favela. --- homicide brazil. --- homicide patterns brazil. --- murder in brazil. --- organized crime brazil. --- police killings brazil. --- police killings. --- political science. --- rio de janeiro. --- sao paolo. --- south american crime. --- south american law enforcement. --- true crime. --- violence brazil.