Brazil’s Maria da Penha Domestic Violence Police Patrols: A Second-Response Innovation in Preventing Revictimization

• Author: Fiona Macaulay
• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/10439862211038439
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862211038439

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2022, Vol. 38(1) 72 –87

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862211038439

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Article

Brazil’s Maria da Penha

Domestic Violence Police

Patrols: A Second-Response

Innovation in Preventing

Revictimization

Fiona Macaulay1

Abstract

This article examines an innovative domestic violence intervention: some 300

“second-response” police patrols set up since 2015 by military police forces and

municipal guards in cities around Brazil. They enforce court-issued protection orders

by paying repeat visits to women at high risk, referring them to support services,

and ensuring abusers stay away. Drawing on interviews with officers who founded

or now lead these patrols, and on local-level police data and studies, the article

analyzes their origins and modus operandi and evaluates their impacts on victims,

abusers, the community, and internal police force culture. Available evidence shows

that victims enrolled in these programs are much less likely to suffer repeated assault

or feminicide than those who are not. The article examines how this intervention fits

with the other elements of local protection networks and compares these patrols

with second-response police interventions developed elsewhere.

Keywords

domestic violence, feminicide, second-response policing, Brazil

Introduction

This article examines an innovation in police intervention in domestic violence in

Brazil: the 300 or so patrols set up since 2015 by military police forces and municipal

1University of Bradford, UK

Corresponding Author:

Fiona Macaulay, Department of Peace Studies and International Development, Faculty of Management,

Law & Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK.

Email: f.macaulay@bradford.ac.uk

1038439CCJXXX10.1177/10439862211038439Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeMacaulay

research-article2021

Macaulay 73

guards in cities around the country. The main function of these second-response units,

generally known as “Maria da Penha” (hereafter MdP) patrols after the eponymous

2006 law on domestic violence, is to enforce court-issued protection orders by paying

repeat visits to women at high risk of further violence, referring them to support ser-

vices, and ensuring that the abusers stay away. The article analyzes their origins and

modus operandi and evaluates their impacts on victims, abusers, the wider community,

and internal police force culture. From a “what works” perspective, available evidence

shows that victims enrolled in the MdP patrol programs are much less likely to suffer

repeated assault or feminicide than those who are not. The article compares their

approach with second-response police interventions developed elsewhere and exam-

ines the degree to which this intervention contributes to the protection networks pro-

vided by the state, the criminal justice system, and civil society.

Changing Police Interventions in Domestic Violence

As an offense, domestic violence has distinctive features that have shaped police

approaches to intervention. It encompasses a wide spectrum of abusive behaviors that

interfere with the autonomy, safety, and dignity of the victim. These include psycho-

logical, emotional, financial, and sexual abuse, as well as physical assault, which can

occur over a very long period, creating victims who are unable, for many reasons, to

escape their user. Women are revictimized, showing up in police data individually as

“hot dots,” their households as “hot spots” (Farrell, 2015; Pease et al., 2018).

Like victims, offenders are a heterogeneous group (Piquero et al., 2006). Some are

“escalators,” although intensification from verbal to physical violence may not be lin-

ear or predictable. In many cases of feminicide in Brazil and elsewhere, a verbal threat

may be the only harbinger of a deadly assault. Improved understanding of domestic

violence as a form of coercive control (Stark, 2009) or “patriarchal terrorism” (Johnson,

1995) helps to explain such behavior. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, 44% of men

accused of feminicide in 2019 said they were motivated by rage at the victim ending

their relationship (Mendes et al., 2020), consistent with data from other states and

international patterns. Conversely, some abusers are “de-escalators”: An episode of

violence may be followed by a “honeymoon” period of reconciliation. Victims recog-

nize this lull in violence for what it is, a respite between outbursts of abuse. Some

abusers maintain a stable low, or high, level of abuse over a prolonged period.

In response, victims become skilled managers of their own security (Monckton

Smith & Williams, 2014). In seeking to maintain equilibrium, they may not seek help

from the police, or disengage after the first contact, if the police intervention does not

create a new, safer equilibrium but instead provokes the abuser to further violence. As

a minimum, then, police interventions should do no harm and not leave the victim

more vulnerable. Police response to domestic violence has also changed markedly

since the 1970s. Reluctance to intervene in “private” family conflicts regarded as “not

real crimes” has, to a large extent, been overridden by new laws that mandate the first-

responder police attending an emergency call-out to arrest the aggressor (Buzawa,

2012). These laws were encouraged by a landmark experimental field study conducted