INTRODUCTION
“In recent times in the favela, shootouts occurred frequently and at any hour. Members of rival groups fought to secure their spaces and clientele. There was also the constant clash with police officers who raided the area [...] the children obeyed the recommendation not to play far from home, but sometimes they got distracted. And, then, they tasted not only the sweet, soft candies that melted in the mouth, but also those bullets that dissolved their lives.” (Evaristo, 2016, p. 76)
The epigraph by Conceição Evaristo, from the short story Zaíta Esqueceu de Guardar os Brinquedos, synthesizes, in literary language, one of the most dramatic expressions of the reality in the state of Rio de Janeiro: the lethality produced in the context of police operations in peripheral territories. Far from constituting an episodic phenomenon, armed violence in the State (external link) of Rio de Janeiro reveals a structural dynamic linking race, territory, and state action, disproportionately affecting Black youth and favela residents.
Data from the Atlas da Violência (2025) indicate that, through 2023, the homicide rate in the Southeast region was 17.3 per 100,000 inhabitants among Black people, compared to 7.4 among non-Black people, evidencing a significant racial disparity. This situation worsens even further when observing children and adolescents; according to the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (2025), Black people account for approximately 65% of violent death victims aged 0 to 11, a percentage that reaches 85.1% in adolescence.
In the state of Rio de Janeiro, the involvement of police forces in this scenario is substantial. Data from the Rede de Observatórios de Segurança Pública of the Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania indicate that, in 2019, the police were responsible for 40% of violent deaths. In 2025, the proportion of Black victims resulting from state intervention exceeded 86%, reinforcing the selective nature of institutional violence.
This context cannot be understood as a mere excess in state action, but rather as the expression of a public security model oriented toward armed confrontation and the systematic production of death. The category of necropolitics, formulated by Achille Mbembe, offers an important interpretive key by highlighting how state power operates in defining which lives are protected and which are exposed to death.
In this context, the hypothesis is posited that the public authorities' insufficient internalization of Inter-American human rights standards contributes to the reproduction of this scenario. Within this framework, conventionality control—especially in administrative and police action—is proposed as an alternative model capable of curbing state violence.
Thus, the objective of this article is to investigate the duty of conventionality control by public authorities, with an emphasis on administrative and police action. To this end, the deductive method is adopted, with a qualitative approach and bibliographic and documentary analysis. Initially, police lethality is examined in light of necropolitics; next, conventionality control and its bearing on the Public Administration are analyzed; finally, rulings against the Brazilian State by the Inter-American Court are examined in order to identify standards applicable to police operations and highlight the need to align state practices with human rights protection.
NECROPOLITICS AND POLICE LETHALITY IN THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO
The contemporary debate on state violence, especially in the context of Rio de Janeiro, frequently resorts to the term "necropolitics." However, so that the concept is not emptied of its analytical meaning or trivialized as mere political rhetoric, it is imperative to understand it as a theoretical category endowed with specificity and operationality. Necropolitics, therefore, is not an abstract phenomenon, but a theoretical framework that refers to concrete phenomena of domination and the exercise of power in its most radical form.
In this juncture, the theoretical foundation proposed by Achille Mbembe emerges from a critical dialogue with the work of Michel Foucault. For Foucault, beginning in the nineteenth century with the consolidation of modern states, a transformation occurred in the forms of exercising power such that sovereignty came to be reorganized as a power geared toward managing life—that is, to "make live and let die." Thus emerged biopower, understood as a set of disciplinary and regulatory techniques that act upon bodies and populations, seeking to administer, prolong, and optimize life (Foucault, 1999, p. 290).
However, Mbembe contends that Foucauldian biopolitics is insufficient to explain contemporary forms of subjugating life to the power of death. Thus, in dialogue with theorists such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, the author introduces the colonial experience as a central element of this analysis, showing that the systematic production of death is not a marginal phenomenon, but constitutive of certain forms of exercising power.
In this way, necropolitics designates a regime in which sovereignty is expressed, in its most extreme form, by the capacity to decide "who may live and who must die," operating through the creation of spaces of exception and the management of populations deemed disposable. According to the author:
[...] the ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. Hence, to kill or to let live constitute the limits of sovereignty, its fundamental attributes. To exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power. (Mbembe, 2018, p. 5)
In this sense, necropolitics emerges as a governmental technology that does not merely "make live," but systematically produces death. According to Mbembe, for the modern state to exercise this "sovereign right to kill," it resorts to racism as a regulatory technology. Therefore, racism, from a necropolitical perspective, functions as a "biological caesura" that fragments the social body, allowing the death of the other to be viewed as acceptable, or even positive, in the name of the security of a group deemed superior (Mbembe, 2018, p. 16-18).
When transposing this theory to the scenario of the State of Rio de Janeiro, one observes that understanding Rio de Janeiro's current public security policy is inseparable from the genesis of its institutions. In this sense, the Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro (PMERJ) traces its origins back to the creation of the Royal Police Guard of the Court in 1809, conceived to maintain urban order and address the demands of social control in a city deeply shaped by slavery (Gonçalves, 2018, p. 23-25).
Along these lines, police development in Rio de Janeiro was structured around a logic of surveillance and containment directed at specific social segments. The actions of the Royal Police Guard focused on repressing what was perceived as "street disorder," frequently associated with the presence of "the enslaved, freed persons, gypsies, and the poor population." Thus, these groups were repeatedly classified by authorities as "dangerous and useless," becoming primary targets of police control and coercion practices (Gonçalves, 2018, p. 27-28). In this sense, the very configuration of police action reflects the power structures of the society in which it operates, since, as Robert Reiner highlights,
“[...] police culture and its variations are reflections of the power structures of the societies policed. The social map of the police differentiates according to the power of specific groups to cause trouble for the police, with those who have least power in society becoming police ‘property’ [...]”. (Reiner, 2004, p. 159)
It is inescapable, therefore, to recognize that institutional racism permeates Brazilian police forces, influencing not only their organizational structure but also concrete operational practices. As in other institutions in the country, this phenomenon manifests in the reproduction of inequalities and the adoption of discriminatory behaviors. In this sense, understanding this concept can be deepened through the definition proposed by Grada Kilomba:
"[...] institutional racism emphasizes that racism is not merely an ideological phenomenon, but also an institutionalized one. The term refers to a pattern of unequal treatment in everyday operations such as educational systems and agendas, labor markets, criminal justice, etc. Institutional racism operates in such a way that it places white subjects at a clear advantage over other racialized groups. (Kilomba, 2019, p. 77-78)
Thus, the historical selectivity of police lethality in Rio de Janeiro is not random, and its remnants persist to this day. The materiality of this project is attested by empirical data: according to the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, in 2024, 82% of intentional violent deaths resulting from police intervention were of Black individuals, with the most affected age group being between 18 and 24 years old. The same study pointed out that the rate of intentional violent deaths in Rio de Janeiro stands at 22.1%, and of this total, those resulting from police intervention account for 18.5%.
The Atlas da Violência (2025) reinforces this scenario by highlighting how racial inequality manifests brutally in the Southeast region. While the homicide rate among non-Black individuals is 7.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, among Black individuals this figure jumps to 17.3. Furthermore, as pointed out by the Rede de Observatórios de Segurança Pública in the Relatório Pele Alvo: a bala não erra o negro (2025), in the state of Rio de Janeiro, this selectivity reaches critical levels, where Black people are 4.5 times more likely than white people to be killed by police officers.
Furthermore, the Relatório also shows that, in the year 2024, the proportion of deaths of Black individuals resulting from state intervention in Rio de Janeiro reached 86.1%, while the age distribution of these deaths was overwhelmingly concentrated among young people aged 18 to 29, accounting for 51.6% of cases. These data not only reveal a statistical pattern, but also indicate the selective incidence of state violence against racialized bodies and peripheral youth.
This dynamic is certainly not confined to the sociological or theoretical realm; it constitutes, therefore, a direct violation of international human rights law. State action resulting in the arbitrary deprivation of life, especially when marked by racial patterns of selectivity, violates the right to life and the duty of guarantee set forth in Article 4 of the American Convention on Human Rights, as well as the principle of non-discrimination. In this perspective, the State not only fails to protect, but actively participates in the production of preventable deaths, in breach of its international obligations.
It is in this sense that the Rio de Janeiro public security model presents itself as the direct heir of a colonial-slaveholding structure that was never fully dismantled. If the genesis of Rio de Janeiro's police was rooted in the control of Black and enslaved bodies, it appears that its contemporary actions still reproduce, under new institutional guises, this very same logic of differential management of populations.
The link between police lethality and necropolitics demonstrates that the State of Rio de Janeiro operates, as Mbembe would say in his reading of Agamben, under a "permanent state of exception." In the face of this systematic scenario of human rights violations, it becomes imperative to seek procedural alternatives that transcend the limits of traditional criminal law dogmatics, such as the implementation of conventionality control, which will be proposed in the next chapter.
STATE ADMINISTRATION AND THE DUTY OF CONVENTIONALITY CONTROL IN PUBLIC SECURITY
The formation process of Administrative Law, consolidated between the nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, established the paradigm of obedience to the law in the strict sense—that is, legislation enacted by Parliament—as the ultimate safeguard of individual freedom against state arbitrariness. However, after World War II, the inadequacy of exclusive submission to the formal normative body became evident, revealing that the law could be instrumentalized by political powers to solidify hegemonic interests to the detriment of fundamental rights (Hachem, 2021).
This scenario spurred the transition toward a new legal rationality on a global scale, introducing an expanded paradigm for the application of legal instruments, in which state action would not be bound solely to the isolated statutory rule, but to a multilevel block of legality comprising not only constitutional law, but also general principles of law and international standards for the protection of the human person.
In the Brazilian legal system, this understanding is embodied in Articles 5, item II, and 37, caput, of the 1988 Federal Constitution, which establish legality as the cornerstone of public management. At the infra-constitutional level, Law No. 9,784/1999, which regulates federal administrative proceedings, reinforces this scope by stipulating, in its Article 2, sole paragraph, item I, that public officials are required to observe not only statutory law, but also the broader legal order (Souza, 2016, p. 377 apud Binenbojm, 2008).
As legal doctrine points out, this reference to the law expands the horizon of state action beyond domestic legislative texts, incorporating the duty to observe international commitments and the interpretation provided by international courts, notably the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR).
This international obligation of the Brazilian State was consolidated through key regulatory milestones, such as Decree No. 678/1992, which promulgated the ACHR, Legislative Decree No. 89/1998, which recognized the contentious jurisdiction of the IACtHR, and Decree No. 4,463/2002, which promulgated the recognition of the Court's compulsory jurisdiction in cases concerning the interpretation or application of the Pact of San José.
Therefore, the principle of administrative legality is read in conjunction with Article 9 of the ACHR, establishing a regime of conventional legality that imposes on Brazil the obligation to respect and guarantee the rights recognized in the pact, pursuant to its Articles 1(1) and 2. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that, domestically, the Federal Supreme Court granted supralegal status to human rights treaties ratified without the constitutional amendment quorum provided for in Article 5, §3, of the Federal Constitution—see Extraordinary Appeal No. 466.343-1/SP, decided on December 3, 2008—positioning them above ordinary legislation and binding all administrative activity to their compliance.
It is within this context that conventionality control arises, defined, according to Ramos (2024, p. 609), as the examination of compatibility and the "assessment of domestic acts (commissive or omissive) against international norms (treaties, international customs, general principles of law, unilateral acts, and binding resolutions of international organizations)." Thus, transcending the initial understanding in the Case of Almonacid Arellano et al. v. Chile, the IACtHR, in its ruling on the Case of the Workers of Fazenda Brasil Verde v. Brazil (2016), consolidated the doctrine that all state powers and bodies must exercise conventionality control ex officio, within the scope of their respective competencies, to prevent domestic laws from undermining the object and purpose of the ACHR.
In the realm of public security, therefore, the duty of conventionality control assumes an urgent character for curbing state violence and dismantling necropolitical logics that manage the death of vulnerable populations. The actions of police forces, such as the Military Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro (PMERJ), constitute an exercise of the administrative function and are, therefore, strictly bound by the duty to observe the law and the legal order in its conventional dimension.
Although mechanisms exist such as Law No. 13,060/2014, which prioritizes the use of instruments of lesser offensive potential under the principles of necessity, reasonableness, and proportionality, or PMERJ Bulletin No. 104 of June 12, 2025, prepared with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross—which instituted Standard Operating Procedure No. 1, incorporating principles such as legality, necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination, as well as engaging with international human rights treaties—such normative advances still coexist with operational practices that strain these parameters.
This dissonance between formal normativity and institutional practice becomes strikingly evident when confronted with recent episodes of extreme police lethality in the state. In October 2025, Rio de Janeiro was the stage of the deadliest police operation in the country's history, with more than 120 people killed, reigniting the debate over the limits of the use of force and the compliance of state actions with international human rights standards (Pinotti, 2025). In analyzing the episode, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) identified significant evidence of disproportionate use of force and potential violations of the right to life, highlighting elements that depart from the characterization of a regular armed confrontation and bring the event closer to a scenario of excessive state violence.
In this regard, the Inter-American Commission emphasized that “the ratio between individuals killed, wounded, and detained in Operation Contenção constitutes a relevant element for assessing the use of force,” stressing that, in the case analyzed, “the significant disparity between the dead and the wounded suggests a context of manifest asymmetry of force” and that “patterns of extreme lethality unaccompanied by a proportional number of wounded require heightened scrutiny [...], a circumstance that may characterize a slaughter (massacre)” (IACHR, 2026).
Thus, the absence of an exercise of conventionality control within the administrative and institutional sphere over material acts and concrete operations permits the perpetuation of systematic violations, frequently shielded by the pretext of strict compliance with domestic norms that bear no relation to the democratic and protective international mindset.
INTER-AMERICAN STANDARDS FOR STATE ACTION IN POLICE OPERATIONS
The case law of the IACtHR has repeatedly affirmed that the use of force by state agents must observe the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality, with the adoption of lethal practices that are disproportionate or marked by structural discrimination being incompatible with the ACHR. Thus, the persistence of patterns of selective police lethality reveals not merely a public policy problem, but a structural human rights violation against Black people, the overcoming of which requires control mechanisms capable of acting upon the very rationality guiding state action.
In the case of Favela Nova Brasília v. Brazil, the IACtHR consolidated rigorous standards for the conduct of police operations. The Court reaffirmed that the use of lethal force must adhere to the principles of exceptionality, necessity, and proportionality, highlighting that state action cannot be structured around dynamics that make lethal outcomes foreseeable or tolerated.
In this context, a central milestone of the ruling was the order to replace the terminology “resistance followed by death” or “resistance report” in police records with the expression “bodily injury or homicide resulting from police intervention” (IACtHR, 2017, p. 80), given that these terms historically served to legitimize summary executions. Furthermore, it was established that in cases of death, torture, or sexual violence resulting from police intervention, the investigation cannot be conducted by the same force involved; rather, the notitia criminis must be immediately delegated to an independent body supported by experts outside the police force under investigation (IACtHR, 2017, p. 77).
Subsequently, adjudicated in 2023 by the IACtHR, the Case of Honorato et al. v. Brazil, also known as the Castelinho Case, exposed the corollary understanding of the “logic of war” doctrine routinely adopted in Military Police training (MARTINS & AGUIAR, 2025). Operation Castelinho took place in 2002, when the Group for the Repression and Analysis of Intolerance Crimes (GRADI), an intelligence unit of the São Paulo Military Police at the time, carried out an ambush using infiltrated prisoners into a group allegedly belonging to the First Capital Command (PCC) criminal faction, resulting in the extrajudicial execution of 12 people.
In this regard, the Court ordered that every police officer involved in deaths resulting from police action be temporarily removed from patrol duties until internal affairs certifies the advisability of their return. Furthermore, as a guarantee of non-repetition, the full implementation of geolocation devices and body-worn cameras on police uniforms and vehicles was mandated, with the recorded material required to be submitted to oversight bodies. Finally, it ordered the State, within three years, to create a mechanism allowing for the reopening of investigations and judicial proceedings—including those where the statute of limitations has expired—prospectively, for potential future international state responsibility regarding the failure to comply with the obligation to investigate human rights violations diligently and impartially (IACtHR, 2023).
In short, the “conventionalization” of the Brazilian police requires a transition from a security model based on the extermination of the enemy to a human security model. This implies that any lethality resulting from state action must be justified through autonomous, prompt, and technical judicial scrutiny that considers not only the moment of confrontation, but the legality of the entire operational design.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This article, far from exhausting the subject, set out to investigate the duty of conventionality control by the Rio de Janeiro state Public Administration as a mechanism to curb lethality in police operations. Along these lines, the presence of state necropolitics is evident to the extent that it fails, in practical application, to align its operational practices with the block of conventionality, especially when observing data on police violence and its clear racial dimension.
Thus, the study demonstrated that overcoming the “logic of war” and structural racism is not the exclusive task of the Judiciary, but also incumbent upon the Executive Branch through conventionality control within public security commands. It is concluded, therefore, that breaking with the cycle of extermination of Black youth requires police power manifestations to cease being vectors of necropolitics and assume their inescapable role as guarantors of public order, ensuring that the tragic situation narrated in the short story Zaíta Esqueceu de Guardar os Brinquedos, by Conceição Evaristo, remains confined to the literary realm rather than Brazilian social reality.