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Abstract

This article analyses how recruits' learning is filtered through their personal social network, with the aim of understanding the role of this network in police education. Based on 68 interviews with recruits about their family relationships, this analysis demonstrates that both relatives and the police academy effectively combine to groom candidates for the rank of officer in the Brazilian Military Police. Narratives from recruits about family strategies to prevent recruits from leaving the academy are analysed, demonstrating the importance of how the family both resists and adapts to its offspring's new role. For a considerable portion of lower-middle-class and non-white recruits' families, the police academy offers an important opportunity for one of its members to gain entry into the labour market. According to interviewees, the familial social network operates as a supplementary curriculum and affective background that prevents recruits from losing heart and provides them with psychological comfort in a demanding environment. For recruits, the participation of their relatives in socialisation proves to be essential to neutralising negative aspects of the police identity and learning process. We also conclude that instead of being an outcome of a dyadic or dual relationship — between the recruits and the police academy — the police habitus is also shaped by a third player represented by the recruits' familial social network, which provides recruits with a support role that the police academy and its official curriculum cannot offer.

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The Family Curriculum: Socialisation Process,Family Network and the Negotiation of Police Identities

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