Crime and violence in Brazil – statistics & facts
The battle against crime shows its first results
In 2021, Brazil experienced its lowest intentional violent death rates in over a decade. In comparison to 2017 when the South American country reported its most murderous year in history, this sudden drop may appear shocking at first glance. However, the decline of crime can be attributed to a series of factors, including a drop in the young, male population as well as several national, state, and municipal security policies put into place in recent years. Another major factor was a negotiated peace between Brazil’s two main drug trafficking organizations, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Command (CV), which led to a reversal to the ever increasing homicide rates in Brazil’s North and Northeast regions – even though states in these two areas remain among the highest rates in the country. Nevertheless, the homicide rate in 2022 increased slightly compared to 2021.Violence with a racial and gender profile
Police violence has been a prominent feature of Brazilian society since the end of the 20th century. As urban violence has increased, the occurrence of violent police actions has become more common. From 2015 to 2022, the number of citizens killed by the police almost doubled. However, the use of police force was ethnically unequal. In 2022, more than 70 percent of police victims in Rio de Janeiro were of Pardo Brazilian or Black ethnicity.In contrast, while the majority of homicide victims in the Portuguese-speaking country are men, sexual violence is still mostly directed at women. In 2022, over 88 percent of reported rape cases in Brazil had female victims. Often times, this burden falls on the weakest individuals in society: young girls. Out of the rape cases reported during 2021, roughly 60 percent of victims hadn’t reached their fourteenth birthday, while around 16 percent were aged between 14 and 17 years old. And regardless of the decrease in homicides between 2018 and 2022, the year 2022 had the highest number of rape cases in the decade, with almost 75,000 occurrences reported to authorities, demonstrating the urgent need to improve efforts in battling violence against women.