Just one day after his inauguration, Brazil\u2019s right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro faced his first public-security crisis. On Jan. 2,\u00a0prison gangs launched a terrorism campaign\u00a0throughout Ceara state, paralyzing the capital city, Fortaleza. Although he has\u00a0deployed federal troops, violence continues:\u00a0278 attacks in 55 cities\u00a0over 26 days (and\u00a0counting), with bridges and overpasses bombed, electricity knocked out in some neighborhoods, schools and gas stations set on fire, and dozens of buses burned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What triggered the attacks? Another New Year\u2019s inauguration: Ceara\u2019s newly reelected Gov. Camilo Santana installed a hard-liner as secretary of prisons, who\u00a0promised\u00a0to end segregation of prisons by gang, proclaiming he would not \u201crecognize\u201d them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In response, the gangs unleashed their attacks and made\u00a0specific demands, as in this \u201cPublic Notice\u201d to Santana:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 We want this new secretary out of our state \u2026 All we want is for our rights to be respected and for everything to remain as it is without change.<\/p>
\u2026 We have in sight more than 20 bridges to explode, we will continue the attacks, until this new secretary is removed.<\/p>
Signed ORGANIZED CRIME<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s clear why prison gangs like the status quo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Segregation by gang was introduced in 2017 to stop the inmate bloodshed after inter-gang\u00a0prison massacres\u00a0swept Brazil\u2019s north and northeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet segregation empowers gangs by giving them \u201chome base\u201d prisons. These have become status symbols, the hallmark of a real fac\u00e7\u00e3o criminosa (criminal faction), as Brazil\u2019s sophisticated prison gangs are known. To faction leaders, desegregation would be both humiliating and physically dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But why have warring factions come together to launch terrorist attacks?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The factions are engaged in what I call violent lobbying: pressuring leaders over policy issues, using violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Violent lobbying, I argued in my 2017 book \u201cMaking Peace in Drug Wars,\u201d is less common than another logic of crime-state violence,violent corruption.\u00a0<\/em>Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar\u2019s \u201cplata o plomo?\u201d (\u201cthe bribe or the bullet?\u201d) threats exemplify violent corruption: coerce police into taking bribes in exchange for nonenforcement of the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But sometimes criminal groups seek to change the law itself.\u00a0Escobar sought to have extradition banned; Ceara\u2019s gangs want to stop desegregation. Just like legal interest groups, these criminal organizations lobby decision-makers on behalf of their desired policies. The difference is they use violence to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Violent lobbying doesn\u2019t look like regular lobbying \u2014 but it shares key dynamics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, lobbying is costly, so it\u2019s worth pursuing only if the desired policy is one that decision-makers might plausibly adopt. Ideally, it should be one the public supports or just doesn\u2019t care about. In Escobar\u2019s Colombia,\u00a0extradition was unpopular and eventually banned\u00a0\u2014 and within hours,\u00a0Escobar turned himself in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Santana, who vowed to \u201cget even harder on crime,\u201d sacking his prison secretary would be politically toxic. But Santana has good reasons to maintain segregation. Many citizens will not follow the details of prison policy, helping the factions\u2019 cause, and even hard-liners don\u2019t want inmate blood on their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, when lobbying succeeds, it benefits everyone in the affected industry, giving firms incentives to free-ride on others\u2019 efforts. Industry lobbies solve this collective action problem by offering \u201cselective incentives\u201d to contribute through trade associations and other legal entities. For criminal groups, cooperation is much harder \u2014 one reason lobbying is rarer than corruption. Outright turf war among gangs or cartels usually makes violent lobbying unviable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But something worth lobbying for can help groups overcome collective action problems. A few hints from\u00a0 Santana before his re-inauguration triggered a gang truce to coordinate violent lobbying, as this Dec. 23\u00a0statement\u00a0from one faction attests:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To continue reading this article, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just one day after his inauguration, Brazil\u2019s right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro faced his first public-security crisis. On Jan. 2,\u00a0prison gangs launched a terrorism campaign\u00a0throughout Ceara state, paralyzing the capital city, Fortaleza. Although he has\u00a0deployed federal troops, violence continues:\u00a0278 attacks in 55 cities\u00a0over 26 days (and\u00a0counting), with bridges and overpasses bombed, electricity knocked out in some neighborhoods, schools and gas… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-3080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-brazil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3081,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3080\/revisions\/3081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}