POLICE APPROACH AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CRIMINAL SUBJECT: an analysis of the public policy of drug repression in Porto Seguro/BA
Drug Law; Police approach; Selectivity; Labeling Approach; Criminal.
n Brazil, studies on drug prohibition policy often gain centrality in the field of Social Sciences because they address, among other topics, the processes of selectivity and subjection in the criminal justice system. Among other criticisms directed at this public security policy, the selection process and prior criminal classification in the police approach stands out, often justified in the subjective concept of the figure of the suspect and based on social stigmas reproducing stereotypes that influence the processes of distinction between drug dealers and drug users. Fuelled by social, economic, gender and above all, racial elements, stereotypes contribute to social injustice and the criminalization of vulnerable classes and social groups. In this perspective, the present work, whose idea arose from the exercise of the intern practice in the Public Defender of The State of Bahia, has as its main theme the police approach and the criteria used by the agents for prior criminal classification between drug dealers and drug users. In this sense, the objective was to analyze the decision-making processes of police officers in the municipality of Porto Seguro, at the time of the approach, among the crimes typified in articles 28,caput, and 33,caput, both of Law nº 11.343/06. through a bibliographic review and document analysis, the research used a case study to analyze the arrest records in blatant crime and the detailed terms of occurrence, drawn up between the years 2020 to 2022, with the purpose of mapping the actions police officers in the municipality, building a socioeconomic profile of subjects typified as drug users and dealers and, base on the criterion used for criminal classification, inferring whether there is police selectivity based on criterion inherent to people. As a result, the small number of non-white people registered stands out, contributing to the interpretation that skin color can be a criterion for selecting the opposite. Furthermore, age and gender were other subjective criteria that predominated in police records. Among the highlighted objective criterion, it was possible to perceive a greater tendency towards drug trafficking in cases where people arrested in the act were carrying large amounts and a variety of illicit substances, even more so if accompanied by the seizure of cell phones, card machines, weapons of fire, among others.Therefore, it is possible to presume that the criteria that lead to the occurrence of a police approach are inherent to the subjects, being the objective elementsresponsible, to a great extent, in the distinction between
traffickers and users in the municipality.