Violence workers : police torturers and murderers reconstruct Brazilian atrocities /

This is a rare study of how ordinary men turn into career torturers and serial killers in the name of public order and security. The authors interviewed 23 Brazilian policemen. Over half had served as torturers and/or murderers of suspected common criminals and political dissidents. The others were "facilitators" who delivered victims, chauffeured assassins, watched, and helped conceal official atrocities over a period of 30 years. The authors do not construct a complete historical narrative of violent repression during Brazil's military dictatorship. Rather, they develop a social-psychological analysis of the perpetrators of state-sponsored atrocities. They explore how future abusers are recruited and trained, how they are pulled ever deeper into the spiral of torture and murder, how they protect one another and justify what they do, and what toll it takes on them in the course of their careers. As the authors of this remarkable study note, the findings of such research sheds light not only on "violence workers" under similar dictatorships but also on the violence-prone members of specialized crime units in the US. A concluding chapter provides a succinct general overview into how ordinary people become monsters for the state. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. P. R. Sullivan independent scholar