Institute of Criminology Public Seminars: ‘The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil – Dr Graham Denyer Willis

Speaker: Dr Graham Denyer Willis, University Lecturer, Centres of Development Studies and Latin American Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge.

How is homicide regulated in Latin America’s largest city? The city of Sao Paulo is in the midst of a dramatic homicide decline. More than 6000 fewer people died in 2009 compared to 1999. Concurrently, though, Sao Paulo has witnessed the growth of a complex organized crime group known as the Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, which controls both prisons and many of the historically violent urban districts in the city. Rooted in three years of ethnographic research that examined homicide and other detectives’ investigations of the two most routine types of killing -homicides and police killings known categorically as ‘resisting arrest followed by death’, The Killing Consensus tracks the ways that the moral systems and practices of regulation on the part of the state and the PCC quietly coincide and, occasionally, devolve into violent confrontation. How regulation coincides or collides indeed reflects the cyclical pattern of relative peace and urban crisis that mark this city.

The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil (UC Press 2015) is Graham Denyer Willis’ first book. In an earlier form the manuscript won three awards in 2014 – Best Dissertation from the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association, Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation in International Planning from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), and Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Graham has published in leading scholarly journals such as World Development and Latin American Research Review, as well as in venues such as The New York Times and Boston Review. He is currently engaged in a research project that examines the ways that Brazilian police increasingly use common social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to document and display their own violence – up to and including killings and torture – to an emergent and increasingly important political constituency supportive of truculent policing.

This seminar starts at 5.30pm,and will be held in Seminar Room B3, Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA. A drinks reception in the basement foyer will follow this seminar for attendees

The IoC Public Seminar Series is open to all interested in attending, with no ticket required. If you wish to be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact: Joanne Garner, on:jf225@cam.ac.uk