Rethinking Peace and Policing in the Favelas in Rio de Janeiro

ongoing

This project will explore bottom-up, civil-society-driven security alternatives in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro as marginalised, racialised and criminalised neighbourhoods, their transformative potential and their comparison to post-conflict community policing and security reform. The project is a global collaboration between NMBU, Norway and PUC-Rio, Brazil. It contains the following three research objectives: 1. To explore bottom-up, civil-society-driven security alternatives in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Data will be gathered through a participatory project with the favela organisations Coletivo Papo Reto, Observatório de Favelas and Redes da Maré, and will include 20 semi-structured interviews, discussion groups, participant observation and open forums for discussions on non-violent alternatives to policing and the potentials (or lack thereof) for community policing projects in the favelas. 2. Study where and how these efforts to ensure human security meet the state and its public security apparatus. Here, data will be gathered through participant observation with Coletivo Papo Reto, Observatório de Favelas and Redes da Maré, and include 20 semi-structured interviews with politicians, members of the judiciary and public security officials. 3. Bring lessons on community policing alternatives and interactions with the state from the favelas and see how they are translatable to other cases of civil-society led/engaged community policing projects. Data will be gathered from secondary sources case studies on post-conflict community policing at the ICT4COP Center at NMBU. The project contributes knowledge on civil society-led community policing in racialised, criminalised neighbourhoods, community alternatives from an intersectional, decolonial community perspective from the global south, and to the study of peace formation and hybridity in violent non-conflict contexts. It also explores innovative co-production through participatory research in the favelas.