Who are Brazil’s private security guards who outnumber the police?

Brazil has a reputation for violence. Tens of thousands of lives are lost each year because of the illegal trade in drugs and guns.

Brazil’s cities have some of the highest numbers of robberies and carjackings in the world. And, gun violence spiked under President Jair Bolsonaro. 

In the country’s tense environment, some people and businesses have long relied on private security guards for protection. But who exactly are these guns for hire?

That’s the question that our partners at The Conversation Weekly podcast asked. 

Erika Robb Larkins is a professor at San Diego State University who studies the anthropology of violence. She spoke to Gemma Ware, a co-host of the The Conversation’s podcast, about what she learned when she was working on her PhD.

At the time, Larkins lived in a favela in Rio, a poor neighborhood where she witnessed plenty of violence, including gun battles between drug traffickers and police. So, she began interviewing police officers.

“Lots of these high-ranking police officers would mention that they owned private security companies,” she said. “Currently, in Brazil, there are more private security guards than police but we know very little about the field. They’re not very well-regulated. But they’re enmeshed with and intertwined with police and military in very significant ways.”

So, Larkins started to follow private security guards through their training and then, into the workplace. At the time, armed theft of cargo was incredibly high in Rio.

As a result, the trainings were filled with “people that were going to go into these really high-combat situations. They were going to be carrying a gun every day,” she said.

Even so, “the training is incredibly rudimentary, I mean shockingly rudimentary,” she said. 

To hear their more of this story, click on the audio player above.