The ‘debate’ and the politics of the PCC’s informal justice in São Paulo

This article is an ethnographic account of the Primeiro Comando da Capital’s informal justice. I introduce a key aspect of the ‘debate’, a dispute resolution process, which has not been discussed yet: its selective and fragmented nature. This refines the idea of normative orders and the discussion on how informal justices shape legal pluralism in Latin America. I show that the effect of the PCC’s informal justice on governance should be analysed in the light of the growing disconnection between two dimensions: on the one hand, its transcendent dimension relates to a set of behaviours and performances. It has shaped the city’s code of the street and has a self regulatory effect. On the other hand, the implication of the PCC's members in dispute and arbitration is as selective as is the order of the police or the state. Access to the PCC's institutions depends on individuals’ networks, their behaviours, gatekeepers, and broader political and territorial considerations that are not grasped by approaches in term of norms, criminal governance or legal pluralism. This increasingly selective system of justice led to new perceptions of the PCC in the 2010s and a form of disappointment with the organisation in some deprived communities.