Facções criminosas: um caminho conceitual

Abstract

This thesis approaches the topic of criminal gangs (known in Brazil as “facções”) from the review and comparison using an anthropological approach of documents depicting semistructured interviews of a gang leader. Specifically, I focused on an investigation known as “Operation First”, carried out by the Civil Police of the State of Pará in 2015, in which the target was a self-styled violent gang known as “Bonde dos 30” (“Tram of 30.”) The key parameter was the following research question: to what extent is it possible to identify characteristics of the “Bonde dos 30” that can be applied to the construction of a conceptual path for other criminal gangs? The hypothesis was that by broadening the view of criminal gangs by seeing them as a complex phenomenon that lack legal and academic structures as the vision of administrative rationality is removed, thus emerged what they thought about themselves and the characteristics that distinguish them from other groups. The general objective of the thesis was to present a path for analyzing criminal gangs, materializing specific objectives: establishing the conceptual difference between more complex criminal organizations vs gangs; describe the way administrative rationality chose to produce knowledge about the “Bonde dos 30” gang; identify aspects of the same which were neglected by the police investigation; and outline how I compared existing relevant literature which focused on criminal gang characteristics. The main sources I sited during my thesis were Geertz (2014,) Shimizu (2011) Gomes (2019) Lourenço (2022) Biondi (2018) and Agamben (2002) The result obtained was the construction of a conceptual path for viewing criminal gangs, based on the interaction between the parameters identified in the existing literature on the subject and the elements presented in the study of the “Bonde dos 30”, with the creation of two principal categories: (a) common internal organizational strategies, and (b) recruitment.