Judicial Control of Police Brutality: Examining the Dynamics and Boundaries of Legal Professions in Brazil

In a country with the highest rates of police killings, the study focuses on the intersection of legal professions and the mechanisms of police accountability within the justice system. In Brazil, most police killings are committed by the Military Police during ostensive policing operations. The majority of victims are young Black citizens. The Civil Police are responsible for investigating these cases and forwarding them to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has the constitutional mandate of external control oversight of police activities through judicial means.

To understand how this external control of police operates in practice, we conducted interviews with legal professionals and document analysis using a semi-structured script. Data were interpreted using concepts related to the interfaces of legal professions and their dynamics of competition, coordination, and symbiosis (Sida Liu; Maria G. Bonelli).

The initial findings reveal blurred boundaries between Public Prosecutors and the Military Police when they collaborate on cases initiated by on-spot detentions, which neutralizes the prosecutor’s drive to incriminate police abuse. The Prosecutor’s Office lacks Criminalistics experts and thus relies on examinations conducted by Civil Police. It is also common to call Military officials to court to testify about the circumstances of crimes and detentions. Additionally, it is not unusual to find prosecutors who started their careers as police officers. Consequently, the way the mandate of external control of police activities is exercised by these professionals, in a context where legal institutions have these blurred zones of intervention, often leads to impunity for police brutality, perpetuating the normalization of violence and racial injustice.