Shawn Plunkett

SOC-245

Assignment #1

 

Crime in Brazil:

Brazil is considered to be one of the most dangerous places to live in. [WU1] Crime rates are very high in Brazil. There are elevated instances of violent and non-violent crimes. Crime in Brazil is so high that this country is considered to be among the top 20 countries by homicide rates in the world.  Historically Brazil has known to be very high on crime rates related to drugs, alcoholism cocaine arms and marijuana violations.  Women and children are the greatest sources of crime in Brazil.[WU2] [WU3] 

Crime handling in Brazil:[WU4] 

 Crime handling in Brazil [WU5] falls into five major departments and law enforcement units’[WU6]  like the [WU7] Federal Police, the Federal Highway Police, the Federal Railway Police, the State Military Police and Fire Brigade, and the State Civil Police, where the first three are under federal jurisdiction and the last two powers given extensively to states to handle crime.[WU8] 

The police institutions in Brazil are part of the executive branch of federal or the state governments are heavily top notched positions.  [WU9] The Supreme federal tribunal defines police to be that which is listed by Article 144 of the constitution of Brazil. There are on other law enforcement agencies. [WU10] 

The job of the police is to maintain order and to enforce law in the strictest possible manner. Generally only in cases of federal entities federal police involve themselves otherwise it is the state police who are involved in handling crime.[WU11] 

Maintenance of order is a preventive effort as reckoned by the Police who are constantly patrolling the streets to ensure that citizens are safeguarded and any kind of criminal activity is discouraged. Law enforcement looks at the Criminal investigation of an offence. (Zaluar, 1995)

Prevention and investigation in Brazil are divided between two distinct police organizations. Local "military police" forces only have order maintenance duties. Correspondingly, "civil police" institutions are responsible solely for crime investigation. However, at the federal level, the Federal Police is commissioned with both preventive and investigative functions of federal crimes. [WU12] 

Brazil is considered to be a country which is well known for its hierarchy of police in handling crime as well as for the high rates of crime in violence and drug trafficking. It has en seen that women and juvenile offenders are most impacted in crime history and they are the sources of crime. [WU13] (Inciardi and Surratt, 1998)[WU14] 

Women and crime in Brazil:

It is a general assumption that women commit lesser crimes than men. With the steady rise in rates of crime committed by women a historical perspective of women criminals is necessary in order to understand the types of crimes committed by women.

It is seen that gender differences in crime rate are higher in men.  This could be due to the fact that the roles of women in public life are different. It is also evinced that the prosecutors and courts treat women criminals differently. [WU15] 

A historically moral and legal norm for women has been ascribed differently. Hence one can see women to be having higher moral values than men. [WU16] Legally too women have been out of the ambit of severe punishments because of the historical nature of the crime that they commit.  Urbanization has had a telling impact on the crime committed by women as with greater urbanization; the kinds of crime committed by women underwent a change. Family structures also had a major role to play in understanding the crimes of women. Though there was generally   an interest towards money there other motives behind d crime was not there. [WU17] Family structures and values have a very important role to play. Participation in labor activities were confined to men and women generally had their avocations met.  Living standards of the people changed dramatically and this too had a good impact upon the crime committed by women .there were some of the  factors that made women  commit crimes, [WU18] the most important of them being poverty and single parenthood.

A comparative perspective of women criminals show that  the role played by women at home and outside are the greatest determinant of the criminal  comparison of men and women and the gender distribution of women  criminals is more as age progresses  rather with the young women  which is vice versa in men . Most of all, when one thinks about crime, it is very difficult to imagine a woman as its perpetrator. In a discriminative way most of us, almost automatically, imagine a man of a certain age and from several specific ethnic groups

Juvenile women criminals are quite less in comparison to juvenile males. This could be a source of comparison because women juveniles are a part of mainstream society and correction homes for women have been known to be very violent. Another comparison of women criminals is that majority of them are just one time criminals and corrections and counseling have seen to be a major part of policing women. The hypothesis is that gender differences in recorded crime are determined by ideologies and practices of male and female public roles which varied according to particular economic, social, and political circumstances. Hence from a historical and comparative  perspective women criminals are seen to be those whose criminal activities could be corrected  as they generally commit petty crimes an incidences of very violent crime are far and few proving that women who have had severe psychological problems have resorted to violent  crimes .[WU19] 

The study of crime has always thrown up challengers to philosophers and social thinkers alike. Though crimes have been recognized and being offensive in the evolution of man into a civilized being, no one could correctly attribute a particular causative to a particular crime. Hence it has become very difficult to theoretically speak about behavior of people committing the crimes.  History has stood testimony to the fact that crime has always intrigued governments and kings and systems of punishments were always practiced in whatever form they were in force. Crime and criminals have been the greatest challenge that governments had to tackle all though their periods of rule. A systematic unit to tackle crime was organized as crimes perpetrated in design and volume, specialists’ were required to tackle crimes and a specialized school of study was formed. These schools turned out experts in the field of dealing in crimes and in criminology. The uniformed officers were trained in different branches of criminology to understand the different kinds of crime that were committed and how such types of crimes could be caught. [WU20] The judiciary has time and again admitted evidenced based on forensic sciences to assist in solving cases. One needs to understand that the Uniform Crime Report is a guiding charter for all crimes in the US. [WU21] Hence the study of the same would help in understanding crime and its causatives.

Crime control is focused on the development of measures that help in the process of ensuring that law and orderliness is maintained in a state. This requires the enforcement and implementation of several laws and punishments for crime. In this way crime is curbed through supervision and surveillance as well as the formation of a criminal justice system which helps ensures that there is no loophole in the process of ensuring safety of the citizens. [WU22] 

The primary goal of the criminal justice system should be doing justice. Controlling and preventing crime is the task of the police and patrol not of the criminal justice system. All of these results in the job of the criminal justice system being to provide justice and ensure that no innocent person is punished as well as the law made to protect people are implemented effectively. It is formed for the purpose of protecting the rights of the people

Crimes can be caused due to a variety of reasons the most important being the questioning of authority. The influence of conservatism is evident in the politics of "law and order" The psychological theories of crime causation, the opportunity theory of crime are some of the crime causative theories which say that the society and divisions of the rich and poor lead to crime and mostly people resent authority. Authority in various forms and blatant refusal to stick to society norms and other easy ways of finding money instead of working all perpetrates crime. It is the responsibility of everyone in society to uphold values of being a good citizen and prevent people from committing crimes. Though these theories have been frequently referred to by all for understanding criminal patterns in human beings, it has been generally seen that  people do stick on to certain predictable behavior patterns that lead them to offend acceptable behavior.[WU23] 

References[WU24] :

Glüsing, Jens (March 2, 2007). "Violence in Rio de Janeiro: Child Soldiers in the Drug Wars". Spiegel Online.

  Heinemann, Alessandra (2006). "Crime and Violence in Development: A Literature Review of Latin America and the Caribbean". World Bank. Retrieved 21 May 2013.

Inciardi, J. and Surratt, H. (1998). “Children in the streets of Brazil: drug use, crime, violence, and HIV risks”. Substance use \& misuse, 33(7), pp.1461--1480.

McLennan, John D., Bordin, Isabel, Bennett, Kathryn, Rigato, Fatima, Brinkerhoff, Merlin (2008). "Trafficking among youth in conflict with the law in Sao Paulo, Brazil". Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology 43 (10): 816–823. doi:10.1007/s00127-008-0365-6.

Zaluar, A. (1995). The Drug Trade, Crime and policies of repression in Brazil. Dialectical Anthropology, 20(1), pp.95--108.

Rio de Janeiro Civil Police "Historical Data" Accessed September 5, 2007.