Preface Elias Miller da Silva, Ernesto Puglia Neto, Menemilton Soares de Souza Júnior, Rodrigo Garcia Vilardi

Abstract

Although the history of police activity follows and is intertwined with the emergence and creation of the first social groups and cities, until the 1960s, studies and research aimed at building scientific knowledge about the police, their systems and the activities they carry out, as well as theorizing their models and attributions, were extremely scarce, if not nonexistent.
From then on, the international scenario changed substantially, given that the social changes resulting from the post-war period and the “melting pot” resulting from urbanization processes, the outbreak of mobilizations and internal conflicts based on the struggle for the consolidation of civil rights exponentially increased by the increase in crime in large cities, seem to have triggered the “trigger” that set off the movement of various actors and researchers who began to focus on the issue of the police and its inseparable relationship with the success or failure of any solution needed to face the new challenges.

In Brazil, unfortunately, this “movement” in civil society would take decades to arrive, so the national academic world only became aware of this issue at the beginning of the 21st century.

It is true that within the internal sphere, especially with regard to the military police and its original courses for qualifying for promotions (currently professional Masters and Doctorates), it has always produced technical knowledge that is indispensable for institutional evolution.

Nevertheless, the horizon for the development of scientific knowledge is directly proportional to the breadth of possibilities for approaching the subject to be explored. It is no coincidence that the expansion of studies on the subject outside police institutions has demonstrated not only perspectives that were not even imagined or explored internally, but has also highlighted the need for constant dialogue between these institutions and the research produced by public security professionals themselves, given the identification of the large number of academic approaches that disregarded basic issues of the service, structure and dynamics of police activity, which, in turn, are more easily understood by those who deal daily with practical and concrete problems related to public security and the respective means of intervention, whether police or not.

Based on this observation, the Institute of Police Sciences of Defenda PM has sought, since its creation, to promote and expand the channels for disseminating studies and research developed by public security professionals, especially military police officers, directly or indirectly related to institutional academic activities, so that they can increasingly be contrasted or fed back by the most diverse scientific perspectives developed in recent years, aiming at the construction and consolidation of an environment increasingly conducive to the development of a police science that is not biased or limited to ideological or corporate positions but, on the contrary, focused on the plurality that is indispensable for a science that is rich, consistent and that contributes to social evolution and, consequently, to a better quality of life for all of us.

Based on the principle that missions become easier to conduct and have exponential potential for success if worked on in conjunction with efforts, especially with people and institutions that share the same ideals, the Institute of Police Sciences began to seek partnerships for this mission and, through the designs of providence, found in the Rectorate and Management, as well as with the Coordination of the Public Security Course at Santa Cecília University, the perfect institution and partners to carry out the actions designed in the field of ideas and start a movement capable of achieving the desired objectives. From then on, the natural and essential step towards the integration of the Center for Advanced Studies in Police Sciences of Security and Public Order, the cradle of scientific knowledge of the Military Police of the State of São Paulo, in this project provided not only the technical conditions for the call for authors and the identification of texts and studies produced by military police officers directly or indirectly resulting from the professional experience and activities developed in the institutional postgraduate courses necessary for the realization of this special edition on public security of the relevant and distinguished scientific period “Law and Social Science”, but also the elevation of the level of the project at institutional levels.

Happy to experience this achievement and aware that this is just the first step in the unlimited potential and scope of an idea, we thank everyone for their support and hope that this publication will not only consolidate itself in the scientific scene with subsequent editions but will also, within a very short space of time, be surpassed by increasingly ambitious initiatives that will help in the search for an increasingly safer democratic society under the rule of law.

Elias Miller da Silva – President of Defenda PM

Ernesto Puglia Neto – Executive Secretary of Defenda PM

Menemilton Soares de Souza Júnior – Director of the Institute of Police Sciences

Rodrigo Garcia Vilardi – Director of the Institute of Police Sciences