ABSTRACT
Th is chapter examines policy and strategic decision-making in the Brazilian police. It focuses on the operational and institutional characteristics of the Civil and Military Police of the state of Minas Gerais, and how those characteristics aff ected the planning and implementation of reforms in the areas of community policing and criminal investigations. In the Brazilian system, police are organized at the state level, which means that they are usually very large organizations with employees numbering in the thousands. Th e Military Police are responsible for street patrol, while the Civil Police investigate crimes and report their fi ndings to state prosecutors. But while they are distinct organizations, both share the cultural and organizational characteristics that are conventionally labeled as the “professional-bureaucratic model of policing.” Th is is especially true in terms of their shared crime-fi ghting ideology and use of technological approaches to crime control (Batitucci 2011).
