UMN Sociology Workshop Series: From the Fight Against Corruption to a War on Street Crime - Discursive Elasticity and Field Inertia in Brazilian Criminal Law

Speaker Bio:

Ed Cornelius is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto, a master's in sociology from the University of São Paulo, a master's in socio-legal studies from York University, and a law degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Abstract:

This presentation addresses the “largest corruption scandal in world history” and its puzzling legacy. Known as Car Wash, the investigation led to the arrests of leading Latin American business and political figures. Following this success, Car Wash prosecutors advanced a bill targeting elite crime, inspired by U.S. criminal law and global anticorruption norms. Yet this reform effort culminated in expanded punishment for street crime. Partly successful, the bill increased sentences across offenses, curtailed parole, and weakened accountability for police killings, which disproportionately victimize Black Brazilians. How did a movement aimed at elites come to harm the racialized poor? Drawing on over a year of fieldwork, 100+ interviews, ethnographic observation, and document analysis, I mobilize the concepts of discursive elasticity and field inertia to analyze how traditional punitive discourses were stretched to target the powerful and then recoiled against the powerless.