Prostitution and police: Women and men in the sights of the vice squad in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil (c. 1920/1930)

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between the police and prostitution in the first republic, with a focus in the 1920s, a time of emergence of a new way of dealing with prostitution in the country, with the creation of Vice Squad departments. An explanation to this phenomenon is sought through a dialogue of the historiography of prostitution with transnational history. The need for an investment in new researches examining personal trajectories (of both men and women) and noting their routes and pathways in regards to prostitution in the country is emphasized. The hypothesis is that the circulation of scientific ideas about prostitution and the movement of migrating people involved in national and international women sexual trafficking during this period have contributed to shape actual regulation of prostitution in the country, which means new ways of state police action regarding this practice. Belo Horizonte's case is illustrative of this wider model of the morality deputies' growing discretionary power during a period of consolidation of moral policing on women and men's practices in places of leisure and prostitution in different urban spaces in the country.