The police control policy in Brazil and the specificity of a “hybrid” control model

The case of Ceará

Abstract

This article seeks to describe, understand, and analyze the policies for controlling public security forces in Brazil and, more specifically, the creation of a new model for controlling police activities in Ceará after the redemocratization of the country. It should be noted that crises in public security are drivers of changes in the policies for controlling police activities and, not by chance, they gained national and local prominence, as was the case with the governments of Tasso Jereissati (1995–1999 and Cid Gomes (2011-2024). The first with the creation of a unique, innovative model, which w)as based on the unification of police correction processes in the same agency and outside the police institutions and the military fire department. And, a decade later, Governor Cid Gome, faced with yet another crisis in public security, in 2011, transformed the Single Internal Affairs Office, as it became known, into the General Comptroller of Discipline for Public Security Agencies and the Penitentiary System (CGD), incorporating prison police officers into it. The question that arises today is how this “innovative model of correction and discipline” for the security forces of Ceará will guarantee continuity of their actions in the face of the conditions of possibilities of government agendas in a field marked by political disputes and corporate interests, as can already be seen with the approval, in 2023, by the Federal Senate of the new organic laws of the Civil and Military Police and the Military Fire Department, which can change this entire configuration.

Keywords: Police control. Government agenda. Public security policies.