Crime Control in São Paulo/Brazil: Military Police and Criminal Justice System

This paper discusses the State actions of crime control in São Paulo State/Brazil in the last decade. We seek to analyze how institutions and State agents engaged to crime control and criminal justice management are affected by the emergence of new "criminal organizations." An expressive growth of the incarceration rates, and increased number of prisons, is linked to the emergence of the “Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC”, bringing a new dynamic to the relations inside the 'world crime'. Research (under data collection) has identified two main strategies of crime control to face the new crime dynamic: i) a militarized combat based on lethal confrontation leaded by the Military Police against supposed criminals and ii) a classic judicial control producing both imprisonment for specific population and low rates of punishment, especially for homicides and police violence, showing the high selectivity of the penal system. Two empirical cases exemplify each strategy mentioned, and allowed to describe some of their characteristics. First data indicates some affinities between classic crime control and police violence.