Abstract

Over the years, the military police have been a significant perpetrator of violence in Brazil, targeting mainly Afro-Brazilians in favelas and poor suburbs. This thesis investigates the case of the military police of Rio de Janeiro to understand how, over time, public security institutions have framed discourses about the use of lethal force in Black and low-income territories. It applies the framework of discursive institutionalism, the methodology of discourse analysis and a comparative approach to analyze emblematic episodes of lethal police violence that occurred across four political eras. The results suggest that over time discourses have operated more to sustain than to change the way public security institutions deal with police killings. This was expressed by: a) arguing that the contexts of intervention compelled the police to use lethal force; b) asserting that the institution was not directly responsible for the killings; c) explicitly defending the public security model in force or the police approach in the episodes analyzed; d) claiming that there was a political interest behind the repercussions of these episodes. When public security institutions, in addition to perpetuating hyper-violent approaches, fail to offer the public a more critical discursive framing of this problem, they further contribute to the trivialization of Afro-Brazilian deaths in low-income territories. This work demonstrates pathways for understanding how policy institutions create argumentative and ideological mechanisms to justify policy choices. It highlights the significance of discursive institutionalism in comprehending the role of discourse not only in processes of policy change but also in situations of policy maintenance.