Homicide, Suicide, Accidental Death… `What Happened?`

Abstract

The paper discusses state agent's death classification practices as “homicide”, “suicide”, “accident” or “natural death” in the light of constructionist perspective that deals with criminalization processes. It analyzes officers and coroners' practical action and practical reasoning and their typifications of the offense and the offender to account for what happened. Ethnographic research was developed based on the observation of nineteen "crime scene investigations" carried out by professionals from the Homicide Division of Rio de Janeiro. The results indicate that the reasoning and practices adopted in typical cases of death are different from the practical recipes followed by the staff in atypical cases of death. For this and others reasons theirs works does little to elucidate authorship in typical and more recurrent cases of deaths classified as homicides in Rio de Janeiro. The results demonstrate the social inequality in the homicide investigation.