On violence, racialisation and crime control: An anti-carceral intervention based on the Brazilian case

On 25th May 2022, Brazilian police fired indiscriminately during a raid in Favela Cruzeiro, Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 23 people, including children, most of whom were Afro-Brazilians. The case was not unusual, given that Brazilian police are notorious for killing with impunity, as well as for systemic racism and discrimination. In 2021, approximately 6,150 people were killed by police in Brazil, an average of 17 people per day (Statista, 2022). This chapter builds on southern theoretical and methodological tools to make sense of how the concept of coloniality impacts policing and the crime control industry. This is done by building on ethnographic fieldnotes as examples and engaging with research by scholars from the global South (Ferreira da Silva, 2009; Nascimento, 2021), which focuses on violence, policing and racialisation in Brazil. These examples enable a reflection based on Southern perspectives that shed light on the context, logic, patterns and peculiarities of the Brazilian case from which wider lessons can be drawn about the importance of challenging carceral thinking. The idea of ‘the South’ is used beyond notions of development, and in terms of relationality: one can think about the South within the North, the North in relation to the South, and vice-versa. This is done while acknowledging that the global South includes territories that most starkly experience the legacies of colonialism as ex-colonies. Understanding coloniality in this context is crucial for making sense of these societies today. The central argument of this chapter is that the permeation of crime control industries in the global South, their manifestations and repercussions in the practices and discourses that shape the everyday of marginalised communities, cannot be understood in separation from an understanding of coloniality in Southern contexts.