Abstract

RABUFFETTI, Angelina  and  BOVER, Tomás. The investigation of complex crime: an approach to the relations between police and judicial officials. Rev. urug. Antropología y Etnografía [online]. 2023, vol.8, n.2, e202.  Epub Dec 01, 2023. ISSN 2393-7068.  https://doi.org/10.29112/ruae.v8i2.1947.

Based on our investigations with the Federal Forces of Argentina, and with the Police of the Province of Santa Fe (Argentina), we propose to put into comparative dialogue a series of findings from our field work. Both investigations focus on the analysis of the practices, routines, relationships and knowledge involved in the investigation of complex crime at these two levels of government, based on the examination of police-judicial articulations. The field work carried out at the federal and provincial level, ethnographic and qualitative through in-depth interviews respectively, as well as the aforementioned comparison will allow us to know differences and regularities in the ways of investigating and promoting institutional links between state bureaucracies. These frameworks - police, judicial and executive - of different types and levels, despite their differences, point to the existence of strong similarities and continuities.

Criminal investigation has been a poorly developed topic. Social and legal sciences prioritize the study of other police practices and types of crime. Likewise, the investigations that are carried out in these areas focus on the procedures and routines - illegitimate and/or that involve excessive uses of physical force - of the police. members of the forces, more than in the proceedings of judicial officials.

To address some of these relatively pending issues, first of all, we will comparatively investigate in search of similarities, continuities and differences, about what Criminal Investigation is at the federal and provincial levels and what agencies and practices it involves, trying to reveal what it “tells us” that articulation on the functional assembly or disengagement between state agencies when processing conflicts and violence.

In Argentina, the police and security forces fulfill the function of auxiliaries of justice in those districts that do not have a Judicial Police, which is why they are key actors in the criminal investigation process. Criminal investigation requires the development of knowledge, agreements and routines that we will address based on the observations we have made within these bureaucracies and interviews with some of their agents. Secondly, we ask ourselves how and from what social processes - judicial, political and media - certain practices are criminalized, or not, in an area known as the “hot border” (Frederic, 2020; Renoldi, 2013) and in a province, Santa Fe, that has occupied the main headlines of national and provincial newspapers due to its permanent association with organized drug crime and the violence associated with it. Finally, we briefly characterize the inter-institutional relationships involved in criminal investigation processes.

Keywords : criminal investigation; police; ethnography; qualitative research.

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