 Daniel M. Brinks, Informal Institutions and the Rule of Law: The Judicial Response to State Killings in Buenos Aires and São Paulo in the 1990s Does an informal institution grant police wide latitude to use lethal force in Argentina and Brazil? Evidence from extensive fieldwork and a sample of police homicide prosecutions in Buenos Aires and São Paulo indicate that an informal institution is at work in cases involving the killing of a victim perceived as a violent criminal but not in more routine cases of excessive use of force. In the latter cases, the problem is more properly characterized as a failure of the system to gather the requisite information to support a prosecution. |