This article investigates, through direct observation and interviews with 27 so-called aspirants, among a universe of 70 students, one of the training activities of young officers of the Bahia Police Academy. Called Jornada de Instrução Militar (JIM) (Military Instruction Course), developed in the jungle, it is a moment of extraordinary repercussion for teachers and students alike. Through mortification of the self and submission, the coordinating team celebrates the passage of the civil subject to his or her new condition of military police officer. The contents experienced are opposing and complement the new officer's training program because: (1) the institution refuses to believe in the training ability of that renewed program; (2) jungle training provides for use of force that are not specified by the regulations and programs of police teaching; (3) the coaching poses as a rite of belonging to a police institution whose force utilization management maintains characteristics that are strongly hierarchical, centralized and authoritarian. The rite/training session in the jungle shows the problem for assimilation of social democratic control and the need to debate the role of police culture in transforming or reproducing police organizations.
police; modernization; teaching; institutional rites