RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil recorded a 22 percent drop in violent deaths in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2018. The Northeast region shows the greatest decrease.
This is evidenced by the national homicide index created by G1, based on official data from the 26 states and the Federal District.
In six months, there were 21,289 murders, against 27,371 during the same period last year, representing a reduction of 6,000 cases.
The Northeast accounts for more than half of this decrease (3,244 fewer deaths), representing 53 percent of the total in the country.
The downward trend in homicides has been anticipated by G1 in the balance of the first two months of the year, which showed a reduction of 25 percent in relation to the same period last year, and in the balance of violent deaths in 2018, which had the steepest decline in the last 11 years of the historical series of the Brazilian Forum of Public Safety, by 13 percent.
The number of murders, however, remains high. The data shows that there is a violent death every 12 minutes in Brazil – 118 per day on average.