Dr Graham Denyer Willis was quoted in Thursday's New York on the routine killings of young black men by police: Times Despair, and Grim Acceptance, Over Killings by Brazil’s Police.
The article examines the violence in Brazil and the police response to crime; a violent trend with police shooting first and asking questions later.
Brazil is a crime-weary country, toughening up on violence and crime before the Olympics in Rio next year:
'At least 2,212 people were killed by the police in Brazil in 2013'... 'In the United States, which has well over 100 million more people than Brazil, the F.B.I. counted far fewer killings by the police: 461 in 2013.'
Dr Denyer Willis examines the rational; “For police, it is just as easy, and understood to be more of a solution, to kill perceived criminals,” said Graham Denyer Willis, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge who studies Brazil’s police. With killings routinely accepted as an inevitable byproduct of reducing insecurity in some cities, the result is “unequivocally a form of social cleansing,” he said.
Read the full article here.
Dr Graham Denyer Willis
Dr Denyer Willis is a University Lecturer in Development Studies and Latin American Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Queens' College, and Visiting Scholar at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology.
His current work examines how new technologies collide with organized crime and policing, raising questions about development, security and governance in cities of the Global South. His is primarily concerned with how the use of social media in unconventional ways reflects contextual challenges to technology as a transformative project, especially when it comes to violence and security.