Recently, police violence is spreading by Brazil stronger than ever. Neither I will cite cases of beatings or torture, confine me to cases where people end up being killed by police. Every day there are news about it, but what might be happening? Why is happening this increasing of repression to criminals so disastrously?

The answers to these questions may be many, but it is increasingly clear what is happening here. This is my hypothesis.

A few months ago, was published by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice the “Map of Violence”, a complete study which is conducted every two years about violence and crime. The purpose of this study is to raise information to the Ministry of Justice to determine what actions will be taken to prevent and combat violence and crime in Brazilian territory. It’s done since 1998 and focuses on the municipalities, collecting information on all municipalities in the country, which enables the data to be detailed and more reliable that information from other sources.

As its name suggests, is not an enjoyable reading and this year brought data that had confirmed some tendencies and that allowed new conclusions about the reality of many municipalities. But the most important is the following conclusion: where there are more police repression, violence decreases. The presence of security forces inhibit the criminals.

To prove its conclusion, the actual “Map” uses the State of Sao Paulo as an example. Until 1998 was the most violent state in the country, now is 16th. The decline in violence in Sao Paulo reached 70% in some municipalities, as Diadema (which was much more violent that Rio de Janeiro). This retreat is due to the bigger control of weapons, investment in the Police (in training, wages
and equipments), strengthening of community policing and the establishment of an “intelligence”. These actions are suggested as an example to be followed by other states.

The other states are beginning to follow this example, but they are forgetting something important. That only occurred in Sao Paulo because the society said “enough” and not because the police came out shooting at everyone. Billions of dollars were spent on Public Safety. NGOs were created with the objective of combating violence and to support the municipalities so that there was a reduction in the rate of crime. Finally, there was an effort of the whole society, involving entrepreneurs, the Catholic Church and major universities in Sao Paulo. I will not say that everything here is calm, as it would be a big lie, but the fact is that the policy implemented by the end of the 90’s gave results. The strengthening of state and municipal police was made in accordance with a series of studies and analyses involving different sectors of civil society.

However what I see in many states is that they are trying to make the change simply repressing, without a consistent strategy to combat crime. The sad fact is that most of the Brazilian states do not have the resources (financial and human capital) needed to follow the footsteps of São Paulo and that is why the violence has increased in these regions. It is need the help of the federal government, but this is not happening. And while there are actions that departs from civil society, unfortunately, the killing will continue.