Studies on police culture are scarce in Brazil. The few existing works result from qualitative researches that face difficulties for capturing not random variations in the dimensions of this culture. This paper aims to help fill these gaps through a survey study with the Paraná State Military Police. The focus is on one aspect of police culture that is relevant to the Brazilian reality: attitudes and views on human rights. How do police agents of the PMPR see human rights? Do they share homogeneous views or there are variations within the Police institution? The paper seeks to answer these questions and test three hypotheses: that the military police agents in Paraná share rather unfavorable views of human rights; that older police agents are more resistant to human rights than younger ones; and that non-commissioned officers and police agents who work at street level share an occupational culture more averse to human rights than the commissioned officers and police agents involved in administrative activities. Collected data show that attitudes of rejection towards human rights are predominant in PMPR. As expected, this rejection is higher among non-commissioned officers and street police agents. However, the highest rates of rejection to human rights considerations were found among the younger police agents. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Military police; Human rights; Police culture; State of Parana
