Policiamento comunitário e a cidadania na segurança pública: a incorporação das lógicas institucionais pelo Policial Militar

Abstract

Community policing models have been disseminated in different countries as a response to high crime rates, and also as a way of responding to society's desire for participation and citizenship. However, the assumptions present in international literature are limited when applied to the Brazilian case. Looking at it as a phenomenon, community policing appears to be hybrid, multifaceted and with several contradictions between what is idealized and what is actually put into practice. There are doubts about what, in fact, community policing is about, especially in regions far from large urban centers, since the knowledge produced in Brazil is based on the context of large capitals, ignoring the majority of the country's municipalities. In this way, I proposed a metatheoretical analytical scheme based on the idea that community policing is governed by four ideal types of institutional logics – military, professional, managerial and community –, in which the intersection between such logics helps to understand it. I question how this model of police practice and organization manifests itself in the daily lives of police officers who, like bureaucrats on the street, seek to justify the efforts of the military police organization in response to the geographic context that surrounds them. Therefore, the general objective of this thesis is to understand the incorporation of the institutional logics of the Military Police. My thesis argument is based on the assertion that the Military Police did not overcome the challenges of the foreign model of Community Police, in order to consider the multiplicity of institutional logics of Brazilian policing. Under the methodological assumptions of the abductive investigation process, I participated in police practices carried out in loco, in the natural context where they take place, and also where they are thought of as an ideal type: in management, in training and in the production of normative documents. From there, I conducted field research using interviews (individual and in groups), and, in addition, documentary research. The field diary was a tool used throughout the research, whatever the collection technique, since institutional logics inhabit the police officer in the declarative and non-declarative modes of personal culture. Thus, the statements given by the police officers in response to the researcher's questions were not considered the only source of cultural analysis. Initially, in deducing patterns, I captured empirical material in the capitals and in large cities in the Brazilian interior (Belo Horizonte/MG, Palmas/TO and Uberlândia/MG); subsequently, in inducing patterns, I carried out participant observation of policing in small cities in the interior of Minas Gerais and Tocantins, in addition to several decentralized locations in the capital. To present the deduction of patterns from the institutional logics of policing, I showed how the empirical manifestation of these logics occurred and then situated them. I discussed the convergences and divergences of these logics, generating and evaluating hunches in inducing patterns. These anomalies gave me insights to analyze events and decisions in extreme contexts, the cartorization of police practices, the police productivity measurement system and the role of fear in public safety. I also presented the implications of the research through notes on what appeared to be the emergence of a new logic: the logic of the extreme. In general, the foreign model of Community Police was not able to promote a sense of security in combating the fear of crime, as predicted by the literature. This is because it does not consider the incorporation of the multiple institutional logics of Brazilian policing in response to violence, organized crime, the militarization of the police force and typically Brazilian social problems, such as hunger, education, mobility, basic sanitation and other social inequalities. Therefore, this thesis challenges the assumptions of existing literature by analyzing the local treatment of fear of crime and police officers' perceptions of public policies in the Brazilian interior. It also contributes to a broader understanding of problems and challenges in public security.