Experiences and Perspectives of Policing in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas: A Micro-Territorial Approach
Marginalized urban neighborhoods are routinely treated as internally homogeneous spaces, where residents are assumed to share the same exposure to violence, similar relationships to organized and criminalized groups (OCGs), and comparable experiences of policing. This research project challenges that assumption by documenting systematic variation in policing experiences within Rio de Janeiro's largest group of favelas. Drawing on census data, an original geolocated dataset of police violations, and qualitative fieldwork conducted across multiple rounds in 2025 and 2026, the authors identify two types of micro-territories within these communities — vulnerable and stable — that differ markedly in their built environments, demographic profiles, and relationships to both OCGs and the state. We show that police operations and abuses cluster in vulnerable micro-territories, characterized by precarious housing, higher poverty, and higher proportions of Black and mixed-race residents, while stable areas experience comparatively little police intrusion. These findings have direct implications for public security policy: militarized policing does not affect entire favelas uniformly but falls hardest on those already most marginalized, entrenching the very conditions — institutional distrust, OCG reliance, and political alienation — that it ostensibly aims to address.
Speakers:
-
Henrique Gomes da Silva is a social worker, researcher, cultural producer, and community organizer who was raised in Nova Holanda, one of the communities that comprises the Maré complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. For two decades, he has been engaged in research and community-based initiatives focused on favelas, with particular emphasis on memory, culture, religion, public security, and urban policy. For the last 18 years, he has also been a member of Redes da Maré, a leading civil society organization based in Maré. He currently serves as Coordinator of the Casa de Histórias e Memórias da Maré (Maré House of Histories and Memories), an initiative dedicated to researching, documenting, preserving, and publicly disseminating the histories, memories, and cultural heritage of the Maré territory.
-
Nicholas Barnes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. Spanning several disciplines, his research focuses on non-state armed governance, urban violence, and community resilience strategies, incorporating multiple qualitative and quantitative methods, ethnographic approaches, and community-oriented research. His recently published book, Inside Criminalized Governance: How and Why Gangs Rule the Streets of Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge University Press), is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. His research has also been published in Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Current Sociology, Latin American Research Review, Civil Wars, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, & the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute.
