Law enforcementReducing deadly police force in Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere
Researchers seek better strategies to control the lethal use of police force in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their findings offer insights for police and communities elsewhere, as the researchers are studying how social and psychological factors affect police and how body-worn cameras can be used most efficiently.
In striving to understand and to curb the use of lethal force by police in Rio de Janeiro’s poorest neighborhoods, Stanford University researchers seek to help inform the widespread debate about police conduct and behavior.
Beatriz Magaloni, an associate professor of political science at Stanford, is leading an international research effort to understand why Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro has one of the world’s highest police-on-civilian fatality rates. Her research shows that between 2005 and 2013 there were 4,707 police killings and 17,392 homicides for a total of 22,099 violent deaths in Rio.
“In many developing countries, the police institution is exceedingly dysfunctional,” said Magaloni, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
“Either cops are corrupt and work in partnership with organized crime, are poorly staffed and trained, or they abuse their power, including using torture and excessive lethal force,” she said.
Magaloni points out that violence is an obstacle to progress, peace, and prosperity in developing nations like Brazil. But police-involved deaths are not limited to developing nations. She cited recent minority deaths at the hands of police in U.S. cities, including Chicago; Ferguson, Missouri; and New York City, as an indication that police everywhere sometimes act too aggressively. And so, strategies that can be used anywhere — like body-worn cameras on police — are part of her study.
Understanding police behavior
Stanford U reports that in 2013, Magaloni created the Stanford International Crime and Violence Lab, which designs research-based strategies to control violence, a central challenge for poverty alleviation in areas like Rio de Janeiro. Support for the research came from Stanford’s Global Development and Poverty Research initiative.
The Rio research has emerged from that effort. For their project, Magaloni and her team have partnered with the Minister of Security and the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro, and nongovernmental organizations working in the city’s slums. So far, this involved more than 100 interviews and focus groups with police officers and citizens. The researchers also conducted a survey of 5,000 officers, or 20 percent, of the Rio de Janeiro police force.
“The goal is to advance knowledge about police behavior and violent crime, as well as provide feedback to policymakers in Rio de Janeiro to design better strategies to control police violence and homicides,” Magaloni said.
