Violence Rates in Brazil are Rising, According to Ipea Study

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The massacre of 62 prisoners in Pará this week horrified Brazil. The incident occurred in the city of Altamira, the second most violent city in the country, according to a study.

The study also shows that violence rates in Brazil are growing, particularly in medium-sized and small cities. Altamira is just behind Maracanaú, in Ceará, the country’s most violent municipality.

This data is contained in the “Atlas of Violence 2019”, to be released this week, which analyzed figures from 2015 to 2017. The research by the Institute of Applied Economic Research, Ipea, and the Brazilian Forum of Public Safety follows the international standards.

According to the study, half of all homicides are committed in two percent of its municipalities — where forty percent of Brazilians live. Of the top twenty most violent municipalities on this list, four are in Pará: Altamira, Marituba, Marabá, and Ananindeua.

Mato Grosso do Sul boasts the best homicide judgement rate. Pará records the worst: only ten percent of cases.

The rise in violence in small and medium-sized cities has pushed up the national index over the past twenty years, despite the drop in large cities.

From 1997 to 2017, there was an increase of 113 percent in municipalities with up to 100,000 inhabitants and 12.5 percent in municipalities of between 100,000 and 500,000 inhabitants.

As for cities with over 500,000 inhabitants, there was a drop of 4.5 percent. Researchers also examined the link between violence and human development based on IBGE data.

People earn less in cities with the highest number of homicides, housing is substandard, and the proportion of youths between the ages of fifteen and 24 who do not study or work is four times higher than in Brazil’s less violent municipalities.