ABSTRACT
The metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro experienced another violent year in 2018, with a new military intervention and increased gunfights between gangs, militias and the state’s Military Police. The policy known as ‘pacification’ had helped to significantly reduce criminal violence in the five years following its creation in 2008. Its decline from 2013 came at a time of political turmoil in Brazil, with rising support for security policies centred on lethal force against suspected criminals. The Red Command is the oldest and largest organised criminal group operating in Rio de Janeiro. It has been involved in transnational drug trafficking since the 1980s, mainly through cocaine coming from Colombia. The term ‘militias’ is used in Rio to describe armed self-defence groups claiming to provide security to impoverished communities, slums against drug-trafficking organisations. The militias are more involved in extortion and the provision of illicit services than drug trafficking, although there are reports of increasing drug dealing in some militia territories.
