Private security and torture: connections between violence and punishment in the city of São Paulo

• Autor(a) principal: Dias, Camila Caldeira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: de Souza Gomes, Mayara, Marques, Gorete, Donofrio , Walter
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Estudos Empíricos em Direito
• Texto Completo: https://reedrevista.org/reed/article/view/608
• topic: torture; private security; surveillance; social control; punishment; tortura; segurança privada; vigilância; controle social; punição

Based on a case study, this article discusses how torture practices have been used in social interactions involving private agents. In particular, how the expansion of new actors in the exercise of social control, as is the case with private security companies, has contributed to a new understanding of the use of violence and how the use of violence and repression appear as devices present in the routines of control, patrimonial protection and surveillance of commercial spaces. Through the documentary analysis of a police investigation that investigated a case of torture of an adolescent, which occurred in a supermarket in the city of São Paulo, we sought to bring some elements to this reflection. In addition, we argue how these new configurations of torture, with increasingly plural contexts and actors, end up also reflecting on the perception of those who are charged with classifying, prosecuting and legally punishing individuals for torture practices. That is, as the actors of the criminal justice system update the meanings of this type of violence through their own polysemic understandings and reinterpretations about the practice of torture. It appears, therefore, that torture, in addition to being present in increasingly diverse contexts, has also served to perpetuate power relations historically based on social and racial inequality.