Abstract
This paper aims to analyse the incorporation and legitimation of Police Science in Brazil. It will be argued that Police Science emerges as a strategy for the monopolization of knowledge about the work of the police - especially the military police - in the maintenance of law and order and as competition for the development of a organizational field of studies on crime, police and justice in Brazil from the human and social sciences in the last forty years. This project reinforces among military police officers in training, the ideological disposition to confront critical knowledge, which feeds back into the military police the great operational autonomy, the strong institutional isolation and the low accountability. Against attempts at ideological radicalization, it will be necessary to reinforce that, in a scientific community, research results can be problematized in their limitations through evidence-based counter-arguments. The field of public security must continue to be built democratically and openly, in dialogue with different groups in civil society. Society and its citizens are not passive objects of the police. They are the origin of the legitimacy of policing models, which are not limited only to technical and operational aspects. They are the fruit of political choices and are subject to public scrutiny.
Keywords:
Police Science; Social Science; Military Police; Public Security; Cultural Wars