Policy

UPP — Pacifying Police Units

A community-policing program launched by the state of Rio de Janeiro in 2008, in which permanent police units were installed in occupied favelas after preceding tactical operations. It expanded rapidly through the run-up to the 2014 World Cup, was sharply criticized through its operation, and effectively deteriorated after 2017.

Context

The UPP program was designed by the state of Rio under governor Sérgio Cabral (2007–2014) and police-secretary José Mariano Beltrame (2007–2016), in the context of Rio's selection to host the 2014 World Cup (with Brazil) and the 2016 Olympics. The program addressed a long-standing condition of armed-group territorial control in particular Rio favelas; the broader context included recurring federal-state operations and the existing presence of the BOPE tactical unit.

Design and mechanisms

The model was two-phase. First, an intervention phase: a tactical operation, sometimes by the military police and the BOPE, sometimes (as in the 2010 Complexo do Alemão case) by the Brazilian Army and Marines, against the armed groups operating in the targeted community. Second, the permanent installation of a UPP: a community-policing unit, with officers selected and trained for the role, intended to provide continuous presence and to allow normal state services to enter.

A parallel program, UPP Social (later renamed Territórios da Paz), was meant to coordinate non-security state services in UPP-occupied communities. UPP Social was administered by the city of Rio rather than the state and was always less well-resourced than its security counterpart.

Implementation

The first UPP was installed in Santa Marta in November 2008. Through 2009–2014 the program expanded to 38 units, including major installations in Cidade de Deus, the Complexo do Alemão, Rocinha, Mangueira, and many other communities. The geographic concentration was in the South Zone and in North Zone communities visible from the Linha Vermelha and Linha Amarela expressways — the corridors used by World Cup and Olympic visitors.

Outcomes and evaluations

Evaluations of the program have produced consistent findings. Lethal-violence indicators declined substantially in occupied communities through the early years of the program, particularly homicides; the Instituto de Segurança Pública do Rio de Janeiro and academic work by Ignacio Cano and collaborators at the Laboratório de Análise da Violência (LAV-UERJ) documented these declines. The program was widely viewed in its first years as a successful intervention.

From 2013 onward critical findings accumulated. The July 2013 case of bricklayer Amarildo de Souza, who was detained at a UPP base in Rocinha and disappeared (he was killed by officers, as established by subsequent court proceedings), became a national reference. Documented incidents of police violence, missing-persons cases, and abuse continued. The 2014 José Padilha-directed film Tropa de Elite 2, while focused on the BOPE rather than the UPP, was part of broader cultural reckoning with police-state relations.

By 2015–2016 lethal-violence indicators in UPP-occupied communities had begun to rise, and the 2017 state fiscal crisis effectively defunded the program. Through the late 2010s the UPP framework collapsed: officers were withdrawn or reassigned, large-scale operations returned, and several formerly occupied communities were reabsorbed into armed-group control.

Status today

By the early 2020s the UPP had been reduced to a residual presence in a small number of communities. A 2022 state initiative, Cidade Integrada, attempted to revive a permanent-presence model in particular favelas including Jacarezinho, with disputed results. Federal Supreme Court orders under ADPF 635 (the ADPF das Favelas) have placed substantial restrictions on police operations in Rio favelas, restructuring the legal environment in which any successor program will operate.

What is contested

Three questions remain open. The first is whether the early UPP period's lethal-violence declines were the program's primary effect or whether broader factors — including reorganization of armed groups, displacement, and the federal-state coordinated operations that preceded UPP installation — drove the indicators. The second is whether the UPP model, with stronger institutional support, could have produced durable change, or whether the structural conditions in which it operated made deterioration likely. The third is the appropriate frame for evaluation: as a security program, as an urban-policy intervention, as an image-management exercise for the mega-events, or as some combination.