Homicide Rate in Brazil Dropped in 2019 but Has Spiked in 2020

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – After Brazil recorded the lowest homicide rate of the decade in 2019, the number of murders rose again this first semester of 2020, according to data from the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, released on Sunday, October 18th. Between January and June, the country reported 25,712 violent deaths, 7.1 percent more than the same period last year, the equivalent of one victim every ten minutes.

The data are part of the Brazilian Public Safety Yearbook and are compiled based on police records in each state. For the index, the Forum considers the sum of murders (when there is intent to kill), robbery-homicide (theft followed by death), bodily injury followed by death and deaths resulting from police intervention – in itself, this last indicator has been escalating since 2013.

This is the first time that the Yearbook also releases partial statistics for the current year. According to sociologist Renato Sérgio de Lima, the Forum’s director-president, this is an “exceptionality” that would serve to assess the behavior of criminal indicators amid the coronavirus pandemic. “The efforts to collect the data from 2019 alone or with the first half of 2020 were similar,” he says.

If the traditional comparison is performed, considering only the years already closed, Brazil totaled 47,773 murders throughout 2019, which represents the second consecutive drop in the index. According to the report, the 17.7 percent drop was also the largest recorded since 2011. In turn, the homicide rate had reached 22.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, the best result in the decade.

More recently, in the first half of 2020, violent deaths exhibited opposite behavior and increased in 21 of the 27 federated states- including São Paulo, traditionally with the lowest rate. For comparison, cases had only increased in one state – Rondônia – in 2019.

According to the Forum, the trend has reversed since September 2019 and the country has accumulated nine successive months of growth. This scenario makes researchers question how much life protection policies were effectively implemented. “Perhaps we have missed one of the greatest opportunities of the past three decades,” says the Forum’s director-president. “While the indicator was dropping, no one was dedicated to understanding what was working and needed to be encouraged.”

Proportionally, Ceará has the worst result this year, with 2,340 murders between January and June, and serves to illustrate the change. The same state had set a record for the drop in homicides in 2019. Experts link this to the public safety crisis experienced with the State Police strike in February. Units that also recorded friction between the security forces and local governments are listed in the Forum’s table. Among them are Paraíba (19.2 percent), Maranhão (18.5 percent), and Espírito Santo (18.5 percent). Questioned, the State of Ceará pointed out that in September there were 252 recorded homicides, the lowest rate in 2020.

Another possible explanation for the increase in violence in the country is the change in the ranks of territorial disputes by organized crime. With the quarantine, with leaders isolated in maximum security prisons and new heads on the streets, trafficking was forced to reinvent itself, according to experts. Amid the lower flight supply, for instance, fights over drug transport routes or even points of sale closer to homes may have impacted the homicide curve.

Sociologist Lima also mentions a decline in federal government investments and a lack of national coordination in public safety policies, among the overall factors. “Brazil has a tradition of insisting on the model based on operational dimensions, more weapons, vehicles and tactical resources – and less planning and strategy,” he says. “Crime dynamics have changed, but our behavior has remained the same.”

According to the report, the federal government’s effective spending on safety in 2019 fell by 3.8 percent compared to 2018, with a total of R$11.3 billion invested. The central government’s contribution in the area stood at 11.9 percent, while the states contributed 81.4 percent and the municipalities 6.7 percent. “The political priority speech was not matched by measures to improve the quality of spending and/or increase spending on public safety at the federal level,” Lima says.

Common homicides and police lethality, which had individual increases of 8.3 and six percent in the first semester, push the country’s murders upwards. In turn, the robbery-homicide and bodily injury rates followed by death dropped by 13.6 and 7.9 percent, respectively, but together they represent only 4.2 percent of violence victims. Researchers’ attention is drawn to the fact that the worsening in statistics was perceived even with the reduction in other crimes during social isolation, such as robberies of pedestrians (-34 percent), of homes (-16 percent), or of vehicles (-22.5 percent).

In the national contrast, six states managed to reduce the number of cases – the main setback was observed in Pará, the scene of faction conflicts and even of prison massacres in 2019, which now has reduced deaths by 25.1 percent. “The major challenge is to maintain these 2020 levels, undoubtedly because of the context of the pandemic, which was favorable to reducing certain crimes,” says Brenno Miranda, president of the Public Safety Commission of the local chapter of the Bar Association (OAB-PA).

Profile

The 2019 data confirm that the majority of victims are male, black and young. For each white woman (lower risk group) killed last year, 22 black men (main risk group) were murdered. By age, the most affected group is up to 29 years old, with 51.5 percent. Blacks correspond to 74.4 percent of deaths. And firearms were used in 72.5 percent of murders – which is why the Forum points out that it is necessary to improve access control.

Police lethality

Killings in police operations reached 6,357 in 2019, the highest level since 2013 when the indicator began to be monitored. Police lethality already represents 13.3 percent of all violent deaths, compared to 10.7 percent in 2018.

In 15 states, the police killed more suspects, most notably in Rio and São Paulo, which reported 1,810 and 867 occurrences respectively. Together, they account for 42 percent of the total figure. With cases concentrated in the capital region and growth of 152.5 percent, however, the sparsely populated state of Amapá exceeded Rio’s lethality rate and reached the mark of 14.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Data for the first half of 2020, which were also compiled, confirm the upward trend. This year, there were already 3,181 victims of interventions between January and June – an increase of six percent compared to the same period last year. Once again, Rio and São Paulo lead the way, with 775 and 514 recorded occurrences.

Governments were questioned about the report. Rio’s government data showed a drop in intentional lethal violent crimes “of 12 percent over the year and 18 percent compared to August 2019, the lowest figure for the year and month since official records began in 1999”. The government also claims a drop in the lethality rate due to the intervention of state agents. “Compared to last year, the indicator showed a drop of 30 percent in relation to the year-to-date and 71 percent in relation to August.”

The São Paulo Public Safety Secretariat, on the other hand, stated that “it doesn’t comment on researches whose methodology it does not know.” But it also highlighted data. “The number of people killed in clashes with state police officers on duty has been consistently dropping in the state of São Paulo since June, when a 20.3 percent reduction was recorded in the indicator, compared to 2019. Considering the months of June, July and August, the reduction reaches 22.7 percent, with 176 deaths recorded in 2019, compared to 136 this year.”

“Police officers from several states were breaking records despite the sharp drop in all crimes against property, cities in quarantine and closed businesses,” says the Forum’s executive director, Samira Bueno. “This is spurred on by a rhetoric that only confrontation controls violence.”

On the other hand, researchers also identified that the use of lethal police force is a “rare phenomenon” in some states, like the Federal District (with a rate of 0.3 per 100,000), Minas Gerais (0.5) and Paraíba (0.6), as well as Pernambuco and Espírito Santo (0.8). In Brazil, the average is of three per 100 thousand. “It is not a problem in all states”, says Samira.

Source: O Estado de S. Paulo