"Understanding the Relationships between Young Offenders and Police in Brazil.

The objective of this article is to analyse interactions between police officers and young people engaged in delinquent activities in two large Brazilian cities (Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro), using the tales which the young people told in biographic interviews. Three dimensions were found to be important in making sense of the experiences recounted by the young interviewees: status (age, gender, extent of delinquent engagement), the way the Brazilian police work (particularly in relation to informal practices) and geographical territory (favela as opposed to the centre of town). Our results allow us to set out the ways in which structural factors (legal provisions in relation to juvenile justice, the organisation of the drug traffic, police intervention priorities) combine and produce complex effects on the relations between young people and the police.