Policía, instituciones para infractores y jóvenes pobres.

This study examines some of the characteristics of the institutional violence present in police interventions on poor youths and in the treatment they received in the so-called infractor minors institutions, based on data from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Police can be described as highly violent and charged with a considerable number of deaths. Lack of hygiene, negative influences on the teenagers and torture are common place in the so-called "reformatories." The causes behind this history of violence against the boys living in the favelas include police impunity, too weak convictions, bad working conditions and even some political actions.