MULTIPLE ACCOUNTABILITIES AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN POLICE ORGANIZATIONS.
Accountabilty, Multiple accountabilities, Conflicts de accountabilty e internal affairs.
The aim of this research was to examine how accountabilities conflicts affect the accountability capacity of public security agents in the context of multiple accountabilities. To this end, a sample of 525 cases of military police dismissed by the corporation was used, which constitutes a confidential and unprecedented database, in the period between 2005 and 2019, and 79 lawsuits filed by the Court of Justice of one of the entities of the federation. With variables associated to organizational dynamics (specialization), characteristics of the accusation (social norms and complexity) and the profile of the accused (accumulated experience) involved, the research carried out descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, aiming to understand the phenomenon through the Probit model. In addition to the quantitative part, the content of the interviews carried out with lawyers, prosecutors, magistrates and judges who dealt with the judicial processes specified above was also explored, in order to complement the results of the regression. Thus, the research found that processes conducted by fixed commissions formed by police officers specialized in correctional activities reduce the probability of “reintegration” of the accused, signaling that expertise and centralization in conducting accountability processes are indispensable to the public service. Surprisingly, it was observed that the social pressure exerted by the media in publicizing and giving transparency to the crimes of the accused seemed to impair the performance of internal affairs and contributed to the reintegration of public agents. The research also showed that the accumulated experience of agents involved in accusations is not significant in the outcome of judicial sentences, in the same way that it occurs in disciplinary administrative processes. It was found that complex cases involving multiple accusations generate more problems of conflicts of accountabilities and make investigations more difficult by supervisory bodies, and that some criminal practices, such as “homicide”, “robbery”, “military crimes” and “sexual crimes”, carried out by the military police officers, are among the factors that reduce the probability of reintegration, revealing that the corporation is more rigid in the investigation of these deviations. The findings also signaled that the military forums (internal affairs, prosecutors and the audit branch) have more convergent decisions regarding the dismissal of security agents. However, the same does not occur between these arrangements and the decisions of the civil chambers of the Court of Justice. Finally, it can be said that the accountabilities conflicts that arise in the military police scope are due to different issues: different objectives/different demands, informational asymmetry and different conceptions of accountability (responsibility and responsiveness) among public agencies. These phenomena affect the capacity for accountability in the police accountability system, as they lead to the reintegration of military police officers.