Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities

Prof. Martha K. Huggins · Mika Haritos-Fatouros · Philip G. Zimbardo

Nov 2002 · Univ of California Press

About this ebook

Of the twenty-three Brazilian policemen interviewed in depth for this landmark study, fourteen were direct perpetrators of torture and murder during the three decades that included the 1964-1985 military regime. These "violence workers" and the other group of "atrocity facilitators" who had not, or claimed they had not, participated directly in the violence, help answer questions that haunt today's world: Why and how are ordinary men transformed into state torturers and murderers? How do atrocity perpetrators explain and justify their violence? What is the impact of their murderous deeds—on them, on their victims, and on society? What memories of their atrocities do they admit and which become public history?

About the author

Martha K. Huggins is Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Sociology at Union College. Her book Political Policing (1998) won two awards. Mika Haritos-Fatouros is Professor of Psychology at the School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and author of the forthcoming title, The Psychological Origins of Institutionalized Torture (2003). Philip G. Zimbardo is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, author of several books, and 2002 President of the American Psychological Association.