Does death have a color?: the sociotechnical production of racial underreporting in homicide statistics in Ceará (2015–2025)

Abstract

This paper investigates how sociotechnical and institutional processes produce racial underreporting in homicide statistics in Ceará, contrasting the databases of the State Public Security and Social Defense Secretariat (SSPDS-CE) and the Mortality Information System (SIM/DATASUS) between 2015 and 2025. The research departs from the discrepancy between the "Not Informed" and "Ignored" color/race classifications assigned by civil police officers and forensic physicians to the same body across different documents, seeking to understand how the recording instruments of the two systems produce (or leave open) the color/race classification of homicide victims. It draws on the sociology of quantification (Desrosières, Camargo) and science and technology studies (Latour; Bowker and Star), together with the Bourdieusian perspective of objectification, to treat forms and information systems as inscription devices, and racial classifications as something produced in the relation with and through them. It is argued that the mandatory nature of the entry does not eliminate the classificatory uncertainties of race/color in the registration processes, and may displace non-information toward forms of statistical stabilization that organize the racial legibility of violence.