Work in progress
Working papers
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Author: Thiago R. Oliveira.
Conditionally accepted, Journal of Experimental Criminology.
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Abstract: Confrontational policing tactics such as the widespread use of stop-and-frisk powers promise social benefits through crime reduction, but often at important social costs. In the context of a Global South city where policing methods rely heavily on aggressive practices, including the threat to use guns during routine police stops, this study provides evidence on another set of unintended consequences of aggressive policing: undermined legitimacy beliefs. Drawing on a three-wave longitudinal survey of adults residing in São Paulo, Brazil (2015-2018), I rely on recently developed methods for causal inference with panel data and estimate the impact of a recent police stop and a recent police stop at gunpoint on perceptions of police fairness, police effectiveness, overpolicing, and police legitimacy. Effects of a recent change in treatment status are estimated by matching methods for panel data combined with difference-in-differences. While estimates are too imprecise to suggest an effect of a recent police stop on attitudinal change, police stops at gunpoint decrease expectations of police fairness, increase expectations of overpolicing, and harm beliefs of police legitimacy. Under a credible conditional parallel trends assumption, this study provides causal evidence on the relationship between aggressive policing practices and legal attitudes, with important implications to public recognition of legal authority. Keywords: Aggressive policing, Brazil, causal inference with panel data, police legitimacy, perceptions of policeManuscript available on SocArXiv.
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Economic inequality and the spatial distribution of stop and search: evidence from London
Authors: Joel Suss & Thiago R. Oliveira.
Asked to revise and resubmit, British Journal of Criminology.
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Abstract: Expanding previous work that focused on who tends to be stopped and searched by police officers, in this study we focus on where police searches concentrate. Using data from London in 2019, we investigate whether stop and search (S&S) practices are spatially concentrated in more economically unequal locations. We use a novel measure of salient, spatially-granular economic inequality at the Lower Super Output Area level and demonstrate a substantive positive association with the concentration of S&S practices, even after taking into account spatial effects, lagged crime rates, and ethnic diversity. Police officers seem to stop and search members of the public in places where the well-off and the economically precarious co-exist. Implications for the understanding of S&S as a tool of social control are discussed. Keywords: policing, stop and search, economic inequality, police effectiveness, social control -
From an offender-based to an offense-based justice: Changes in sentencing patterns in the Brazilian juvenile justice system from 1990 to 2006
Authors: Thiago R. Oliveira, Marcos César Alvarez, & Bruna Gisi
Asked to revise and resubmit, Crime, Law and Social Change.
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Abstract: Juvenile justice systems around the globe are increasingly more similar to criminal justice systems. In Brazil, previous legislations focused on the individuals themselves and did not distinguish between young offenders and children in precarious conditions, but a new legislation in 1990 marked a rupture and introduced elements of criminal law. We leverage a unique data set representative of every adolescent who has been through the juvenile justice system in the state of São Paulo between 1990 and 2006 and provide a quantitative assessment of the changes in sentencing patterns in the period. Results suggest that judges increasingly prioritise violent and drug-related offenses when convicting adolescent defendants, indicating that the Brazilian juvenile justice system progressively resembles the criminal justice rationale by emphasising the ideal of proportionality between crime and punishment. We conclude with a discussion on pendular justice, suggesting that juvenile justice in Brazil is moving from a positivist-inspired to a classic-inspire justice system. Keywords: juvenile justice, sentencing, young offenders, criminological thought, Brazil -
Author: Thiago R. Oliveira
Under review, Criminology.
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Abstract: Residents of some neighborhoods often experience an overwhelming police presence that intrudes upon their lives, and yet feel unprotected by law enforcement agents who neglect safety provision, in a process named by the literature the overpolicing-underpolicing paradox. In the context of one of the largest cities in the Global South, this study provides a quantitative assessment of the dynamics and consequences of public expectations of overpolicing and underpolicing. Drawing upon a three-wave longitudinal survey representative of eight neighborhoods in São Paulo, Brazil, I demonstrate that perceptions of overpolicing and underpolicing (a) mutually reproduce each other over time, (b) share similar correlates, most notably related to exposure to structural disadvantage and aggressive police stops, (c) harm legitimacy judgements by sending negative relational messages of marginalization and neglect, and (d) contribute to increased levels of tolerance of violence via undermined legitimacy beliefs. This study provides further evidence that the demand for public safety in disadvantaged communities does not seem to be solved by policing strategies centered around the increase of coercive police presence, and highlights the relevance of investigating public-authority relations in understudied Global South settings. Keywords: overpolicing-underpolicing paradox, legal cynicism, legitimacy, violence, BrazilManuscript available on SocArXiv.
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Authors: Thiago R. Oliveira, Jon Jackson, Renan Theodoro, Debora Piccirillo, & Rick Trinkner.
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Abstract: We examine the role that exposure to neighborhood and police violence plays in the legal socialization of adolescents aged 11 to 14 years living in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. In a context of idiosyncratic and violent policing, where the state's ability to control crime is low, we assess the extent to which being exposed to neighborhood crime and violence (e.g., listening to gunshots and witnessing or hearing about citizens carrying guns, being robbed, or selling drugs), aggressive police behavior with violent undertones (e.g., certain forcible types of police stops and arrests), and/or outright violent police behavior (officers assaulting a member of the public) is associated with the development of adolescents’ judgements about the legitimacy of the law. Analyzing data from a cohort-based, four-wave longitudinal survey of 2005-born young people living in São Paulo from 2016 to 2019, we use growth curve models to estimate developmental trajectories of legitimacy beliefs. Results suggest that individual exposure to police violence is associated with the process of legal socialization and that, above and beyond this individual effect, adolescents attending schools where other students are exposed to neighborhood violence tend to develop more negative views about the legitimacy of legal authority over time. Keywords: legal socialization, violence exposure, legitimacy of the law, police violence, BrazilManuscript available on SocArXiv.