Dr Thiago R. Oliveira , Lecturer in Policing at the Department of Criminology of The University of Manchester, has been awarded the Early Career Prize of the European Society of Criminology (ESC) Policing Working Group. The award recognises outstanding research by early career scholars contributing to the study of policing.
Thiago received the prize for his article "Aggressive policing and undermined legitimacy: assessing the impact of police stops at gunpoint on perceptions of police in São Paulo, Brazil", published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology (2024). The study examines the effects of aggressive police encounters on public attitudes toward the police in São Paulo, Brazil.
Using a three-wave longitudinal survey of residents, the findings reveal that while general police stops had no clear impact on public attitudes, police stops involving officers pointing a gun significantly reduced public perceptions of police procedural fairness, increased concerns about over-policing, and harmed perceptions of police legitimacy.
These results highlight the social costs of confrontational policing tactics, particularly in disadvantaged urban areas, and underscore the need for policing practices that prioritise community trust alongside crime control. The award panel noted that "this article exemplifies Dr Oliveira’s influential research on police misconduct and attitudes towards the police in São Paulo, Brazil, using longitudinal survey data".
A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (PhD, 2021), Thiago previously held research and teaching positions at the Universities of Oxford and Surrey before joining Manchester in 2023. His work on police misconduct and legitimacy has been widely published in leading journals, including Law and Society Review, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and The British Journal of Criminology.
The award was presented during the 25th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, held in Athens, Greece.
