Printer-friendly versionSend to friend

Police brutality and torture are widespread in Brazil. What makes the problem worse is the fact that police officers are poorly paid and corruption is rampant.

The Centro de Assessoramento a Programas de Educação para a Cidadania (CAPEC, or the Center for Advising Citizenship Education Programs) uses a comprehensive training approach to persuade police officers to transform their relationships with the communities in which they work. CAPEC provides training to police officers to help them understand the vital role they can play as defenders of human rights. The training, which includes a wide variety of courses, emphasizes the human rights of all citizens, including the police officers themselves.

CAPEC’s goal is to create “interactive security,” in which public security efforts are planned and organized together with community members and in which responsibilities are shared, resulting in policing that effectively responds to the needs of citizens.  In order for its message to reach as many people as possible, CAPEC asks police departments to recommend officers who can share their training experience with others when they return to work.

The training courses, carried out in three two-day modules over six months, with community members participating along with officers, focus on showing law enforcement officers how important their role is in society and how their work affects the lives of individuals and communities. Officers explore what they believe and feel and how they relate with other human beings. They also learn about the many advantages of interactive security, including more effective policing and safer conditions for officers. Trainers use many stories, metaphors and examples taken from the experiences of the students and focus on educating rather than judging behavior.

CAPEC’s training has so far been used in 25 states in Brazil and with more than 30,000 participants, mainly from the civil, military, federal, and traffic police and municipal guards. The organization has worked with the federal, state and city governments.

CAPEC’s tactic is especially interesting because it involves a group that has been responsible for committing or allowing abuse and transforms them into advocates for human rights. This approach not only contributes to a stronger human rights culture in Brazil, but also directly reduces ongoing abuses by creating a favorable environment in which the police and community look for joint solutions to the problems they face.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk