Inside Criminalized Governance
How and Why Gangs Rule the Streets of Rio de Janeiro

This book provides unprecedented ethnographic access inside the governance practices of Rio de Janeiro's drug trafficking gangs.

Nicholas Barnes (Author)

9781316513040, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 February 2025

392 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.675 kg

'Inside Criminalized Governance is a terrific example of effectively addressing and filling a gap that characterized the field for decades in political science. In doing so, the book offers a refreshing, stimulating read for why gangs, instead of being considered as apolitical organization with deviant subjects, should be considered as agents capable of exercising political roles. The book ultimately demonstrates why gangs are not aberrations of marginalized communities but rather central actors of the function of politics, order, and control.' Juan Corredor-Garcia, Midwest Political Science Association

For over four decades, drug trafficking gangs have monopolized violence and engaged in various forms of governance across hundreds of informal neighborhoods known as favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on three years of ethnographic fieldwork, over 200 interviews with gang members and residents, 400 archival documents, and 20,000 anonymous hotline denunciations of gang members, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of these governance arrangements. The book documents the variation in gang-resident relationships – from responsive relations in which gangs provide a reliable form of order and stimulate the local economy, to coercive and unresponsive relations in which gangs offers residents few benefits – then identifies the factors that account for this variation. The result is an unprecedented ethnographic study that provides readers a unique, in-depth insight into the evolution of Rio de Janeiro's drug trafficking gangs from their emergence in the 1970s to the present day.

1. Introduction
2. Criminalized Governance: A Conceptual Framework
3. A Theory of Criminalized Governance
4. The Origins of Criminalized Governance
5. Comando Vermelho of Nova Holanda
6. Comando Vermelho of Parque União
7. Terceiro Comando (Puro) of Complexo da Maré
8. Criminalized Governance during Military Occupation
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]