Goose aviaries and duck aviaries:

a study on police practices involving drug seizures in the state of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The objective of this article is to describe and interpret a type of police force employment as a result of compliance with Law 11.343/ 2006, known in Brazil as the Drug Law. By placing the resulting results under sociological analysis, we hope to contribute within the scope of studies on the practical effects of this political and legal technology, which, by defining which substances can and should, or not, circulate in social environments, creates, as a consequence, the structures of clandestine circulation and its social legacies. Highlighting the face of the so-called “war on drugs” in Rio de Janeiro, with police forces on the front line and with “trafficking” as the enemy to be defeated, and entire populations circulating at the front. The methodology used is ethnographically inspired fieldwork, with extensive use of material originating from direct conversations with the subjects involved in police actions. The research results point to the systematic difficulty of Rio de Janeiro's police forces in operating within the logic of institutional conflict management, which would be their role within a Democratic State of Law, since in a large part of the territories they are one of the parties in open conflict.