“DRUG PLACES”: THE LEGAL GEOGRAPHY OF POLICE STOPS IN PORTO ALEGRE

Abstract

In this study of legal geography, we aim at understanding whether the spatiality is a relevant factor in determining founded suspicion in police stops related to drug trafficking in Brazil. Police stop is a procedure that consists of police officers stopping, questioning, and even searching a person who is suspected of unlawfully carrying objects such as weapons and drugs. Based in the literature on the behavioral, organizational, and spatial factors that explain selective policing, we suggest that individuals who encounter the police in villas and favelas are more likely to be suspected of drug trafficking than similarly behaving individuals who interact with the police elsewhere in the city. In this study, empirical evidence is provided to test this hypothesis, by means of an analysis of a georeferenced dataset on 635 police stops involving drug trafficking cases in the municipality of Porto Alegre, which ended in rulings of the State of Rio Grande do Sul Court of Appeal during the period 2015-2017. Our analysis shows that the construction of police suspicion is influenced by representations of space that conceive informal urban settlements as “drug places”.

Keywords
Legal geography; informal settlements; drug trafficking; policing; police stop