Public acquiescence of police brutality and extrajudicial killings in São Paulo, Brazil

The purpose of the current research was to take a social psychological approach to understanding public acquiescence and support for extra legal police violence in Brazil. Data were drawn from research conducted by NEV-CEPID/FAPESP. The sample consisted of 1000 youth and adults age 16 and greater in the city of São Paulo who were representative of the general population based on sex, age, education level, occupation, and geographic area (with an oversampling of people from violent neighborhoods). T-tests and ANOVA techniques were utilized to explore group differences in support for citizen and police extra-legal violence based on race, social class, and gender. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then used to estimate a mediational model of the relationships between environmental influences (direct and indirect victimization, as well as the presence of neighborhood incivilities), general justice related judgments and paradigms (the justice system as inefficient and ineffective, the traditional human rights paradigm, and the emerging human rights paradigm) and support for specific kinds of extra legal violence (support for citizen vigilante justice, support for procedural violence by the police, and support for retributive violence by the police). As hypothesized, direct victimization, indirect victimization, and neighborhood incivilities were all positively associated with fear of crime. In turn, fear of crime was negatively associated with adopting the emerging human rights paradigm and positively associated with viewing the justice system as inefficient and ineffective. Unexpectedly, fear of crime was not associated with a more traditional human rights paradigm. However, the emerging human rights paradigm was negatively associated with support for citizen vigilante justice, as well as support for procedural and retributive violence by the police. Conversely, the traditional human rights paradigm was positively associated with support for all three types of violence. Furthermore, viewing the justice system as inefficient and ineffective was positively associated with support for citizen vigilant justice and retributive violence, but, unexpectedly, was not related to support for procedural violence. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.