ABSTRACT

The pacification programme that emerged in Rio de Janeiro must be viewed as an attempt to progress beyond such negative imagery, to break from a record of public security failure, and to achieve some tentative reforms of the police. The theoretical construct of the Rio de Janeiro's Pacification Model (RJPM) that is proposed in this chapter speaks to an even broader strategy of social ordering through police action than what is occurring in the favelas of Rio; one extending into foreign urban security contexts – for inspiration and for application – and which exerts increasing influence upon other sectors of Brazilian society. International recognition of Brazil as a source-nation for security expertise is at least partially attributable to the hyperactive networking activities of its policing institutions. The large-scale depiction of police operations as humanitarianism is a novel twist, albeit one that has a degree of precedent in more discrete public security interventions in Rio de Janeiro.