Violent conflict resolution declines in São Paulo prisons

The decline in violent conflict resolution has extended to the city’s outskirts and is related to the PCC’s adoption of equality among its members, according to a study conducted by UFSCar

 

By Elton Alisson

 

Agência FAPESP – In the last few years, conflicts in São Paulo prisons have been resolved through conversation rather than violence.

This phenomenon has begun to spread beyond the walls of prisons and has been adopted in other areas of the city where there are greater numbers of former inmates of the penitentiary system, such as the outskirts of major cities.

This is the major finding of an FAPESP-funded doctoral study conducted at the Education and Human Sciences Center at Universidade Federal de São Carlos São Carlos (UFSCar).

Some of the preliminary results of the study were presented at the 28th Meeting of the Brazilian Anthropology Association (ABA), held in São Paulo this past July.

According to the study’s author, Karina Biondi, researchers observed that in the early 2000s, conversation began to be valued over physical force for conflict resolution within São Paulo prisons. This change made the use of violence a last resort that is only considered legitimate after a period of intense debate.

The change is thought to be linked to a movement, known as an “internal revolution,” that began in the middle of the first decade of the 2000s in the largest and most organized criminal faction in Brazil, First Command of the Capital (or Primeiro Comando da Capital - PCC). At that time, Biondi began to study the group, which emerged in São Paulo prisons in the 1990s.

At the time, Biondi was conducting her master’s studies on the PCC’s political structure and hierarchy, which resulted in the book Junto e misturado: uma etnografia do PCC (Together and Mixed: an ethnography of the PCC). During that time, the criminal faction added the word “equality” to their motto, which had previously been “peace, justice and liberty,” like their Rio de Janeiro counterpart, the Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV).

With this addition, the question of equality began to spread throughout the dynamics of relations between the “brothers,” as the PCC members are known. The PCC eliminated hierarchical structures and positions, such as generals, and made old practices, such as sexual violence and physical aggression, less frequent inside São Paulo prisons.

“Adding ‘equality’ to the PCC motto prompted statements such as ‘it’s among equals’ or ‘where’s the equality,’ not only among ‘brothers’ but also throughout the prison population. These questions prevented manifestations of hierarchical structures and physical violence,” Biondi told Agência FAPESP.

“It is clear that hierarchical manifestations appear all the time among brothers. But the statement of equality attempts to prevent leadership or relationships of orders and obedience from crystallizing because if “it’s among equals” no one can order anyone else around. And violence is also always on the horizon but won’t happen if there has not been some debate,” she explains.

As a result of these new dynamics in relationships between members of the PCC, companions frown upon a criminal who orders another or a criminal who obeys another.

The criminal who obeys another’s orders ends up being considered a “slug” and the person who gives an order is seen as a “scoundrel,” persona from pre-PCC times when prisoners sold cells and toilet tissue, and rapes were common inside prisons.

“This idea of equality has been appearing little by little in the most trivial situations involving day-to-day relations among them, such as the decision as to who can sleep in beds and who will have to sleep on floors in overcrowded cells,” explains Biondi.

“Creating criteria to resolve a situation like this is part of the question of equality, which is demanded by members any time that they believe a situation is unjust or not ‘among equals’ [de igual], an expression that even some foreigners incarcerated in São Paulo prison units, who do not speak Portuguese, have learned,” she explains.

The materiality of words

According to Biondi, this new dynamic in relationships between inmates in São Paulo prison units, which has been implemented by the PCC based on the value of one’s word over physical violence for conflict resolution, has made certain characteristics, such as being a good speaker, prerequisites for inmates to become members of the criminal faction.

In addition to one’s word being the only “weapon” that the “brothers” use to negotiate in conflict situations among inmates, prison directors and the surrounding communities, one’s word is also the means by which the PCC materializes inside and outside of prison units.

“Because the PCC does not exist as a structure with hierarchical levels, there is not a symbol that allows anyone to identify who is or is not a ‘brother,’ and pretending to be one is not well viewed. The Command only exists and materializes when one speaks or is called,” says Biondi.

One of the situations that Biondi observed and documented during her study was a fight in a community in which a PCC member was called to end the squabble.

Upon approaching the group involved in the fight, one of the people asked who he was, to which he responded, “This is the PCC.” This identification ended the fight, and the people who had participated in the fight turned their attention to him to mediate the conflict.

“There, he was the spokesperson and represented the PCC because, if there are not hierarchical levels that the group can turn to, the ‘brothers’ have the responsibility to be the Command in the words that they utter, which must be stated precisely. If not, the member could be accused of not following the PCC’s ideals and could suffer consequences, such as exclusion,” says Biondi.

The legitimacy of the "brothers" is implementing the PCC through ideas of equality and the centrality of the use of words to resolve conflicts that are currently widely disseminated in the dynamism of São Paulo’s outskirts.

“This practice of utilizing debate has extrapolated criminal interaction and spread to the city’s outskirts, as other researchers have noted. In amateur soccer games, for example, situations that previously generated fights are resolved through debates,” Biondi says.