Crime: Effort to mend a violent reputation (Brazil)

[Judi Lynn]

Crime: Effort to mend a violent reputation
By Andrew Downie

Published: July 8 2008 00:29 | Last updated: July 8 2008 00:29

Brazil has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most violent nations in the world. Between 1993 and 2003, the average number of people killed each year from gunshot wounds was 32,555, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). That surpassed the annual number of deaths in conflicts in Chechnya, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Algeria and even the first Gulf war.

It is an expensive business. The violence cost the country R$92bn ($57bn) in 2004, or about 5 per cent of gross domestic product, according to a study released last year by the government’s Research Institute for Applied Economics (IPEA). But while these numbers are remarkable, recent developments suggest that all is not lost. Unexpectedly, the homicide rate is declining.

“For the first time in Brazilian history, we have had three years in which the measures of fatal violence have fallen,” says Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, author of the Violence Map, a government-sponsored study of homicides nationwide. “There is light at the end of the tunnel.”

The reasons for the downward trend are varied. On a national level, a booming economy, rising wages and low unemployment mean more people have more money. And a far-reaching assistance programme that gives cash stipends to the poorest families has lifted millions of people out of poverty and given them real hope for the future. The most important factor was tighter restrictions on weapons sales, introduced in 2003, says Mr Waiselfisz, a researcher for the Latin American Information and Communications Network.

Although the vast majority of weapons in circulation are unlicensed, new legislation made it harder to legally buy arms. The government also got half a million guns off the street in a buy-back programme and it increased fines and penalties for those caught carrying unlicensed weapons.

The effects of the ban were especially noticeable in the country’s most populous state, São Paulo. There, by not renewing gun permits, authorities reduced the number of legal weapons in circulation to about 3,000, from a previous high of 80,000.

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