This paper presents an empirical description of the language production of urban violence (understood as an organized practice, a grammar) and its implications on public policy. Two sets of issues are discussed and related to: a) the relationship between urban violence, routines and organization of social relations in the city, b) the impact of change in the debate about the policies regarding public order on the current forms of criminality and territorial segregation of poverty, discussing the status of slums as an exemplary device of this process. The text aims to preserve local peculiarities according to which these two types of questions present themselves as lived experiences, so that the main focus of attention is the singular case of Rio de Janeiro.
urban violence; violent sociability; public order; police activity; slum; urban segregation; the criminalization of poverty; routine