The Endless Repetition of Dealings/ Killings and the Rule of Law

One cannot understand public security in Brazil without taking into account organized crime in drug trafficking, that is, a global perspective. In Brazil, mafia-type organization arise from bank robbers that were put together with political prisoners during the military regime and learned from the latter the importance of organizing themselves. Prison was the place where the former started factions for protecting prisoners from their attackers and scammers. Soon they discovered that drug dealers were making a lot of money without the risk of being accused under the National Security Law. As prisons are porous systems, common prisoners started to blackmail and intimidate traffickers for the protection they could be offered when arrested. Drug dealers pay bribes to policemen, lawyers, actors in the crime scene. There is a continuous string of strategic games wherein many partners’ intermediaries, and opponents participate in order to avoid detention. The narratives are endless, and the negotiations with policemen linger on unpredictably, with retail dealers spending most of their time negotiating and paying dearly for their freedom. It is this chain of interactions that finally binds them to the rules of negative reciprocity based on blackmail and threats that criminal factions employ, the only possibility of protection inside a prison where they can die for nothing. Game theory called that an "endless repetition of interactions," in which partners learn how to act cooperating and being strong. What are the differences between the exchanges of drug dealers and policemen, vis-a-vis the dealings between faction members? As long as the institutional players in these games do not agree to the rule of law, those involved in crime will continue to overpass law, and to wage war with policemen. What explains crime is not poverty, but the opposition to the democratic rule of law.