Destroying Criminals or Enacting Preferred Behaviors?

• In Event: Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference III: Criminal Politics in Violent Democracies

Abstract

Recent research shows that when state repression is conditional on how criminals behave, it is likely to be more effective in curbing criminal violence. Policymakers and scholars alike argue that governments do not adopt a selective repression approach more often because it is likely unpopular, as the public might see it as “soft on crime.” To test this proposition, we study public attitudes in two Brazilian cities profoundly affected by criminal violence, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, leveraging cross-city variation in how drug syndicates participate in the drug trade and engage in violence. We draw on survey experiments to (a) descriptively map support for selective repression and (b) experimentally identify potential factors that could drive this support. We find that support for selective repression is higher than policymakers and scholars expect: one-third of our respondents are willing to back the implementation of such an approach in the cities. Support is higher in São Paulo than in Rio de Janeiro, suggesting that fiercer competition between drug syndicates and higher levels of violence do not drive support. When conditional repression is framed as a means of reducing violence, support for conditional repression decreases. However, the public cares more about reducing some forms of violence than about others. In both cities, support for conditional repression is higher when aimed at reducing forms of violence that directly affect the population.

Authors

• Juan Masullo, Leiden University

• Davide Morisi, University of Southern Denmark