São Paulo revealed as fourth least violent state in Brazil
The violent 'uprising' staged by the PCC in São Paulo in May, and its sequels, may have created the impression that the country's industrial hub is also its most violent area. The 'Map of Violence' just released by the federal security secretariat shows that nothing could be further from the truth: not only has São Paulo's murder rate been falling, but the state ranks as Brazil's fourth-least violent.
São Paulo is Brazil's most populous state. Last year it recorded 7,640 murders, down from 9,366 in 2004. In 2005 its murder rate was 18.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than a third of that of the most violent state, Rio de Janeiro (61.5) and considerably lower than the national average of 30 per 100,000.
Rio is followed in the murder league by Pernambuco (58.2), Paraná (57.4), and Goiás (46). It is worth mentioning that the number of murders in Rio also fell between 2004 and 2005, from 9,859 to 9,467. When the 'map' zooms in on individual municipalities, it is Camaragibe, in the metropolitan region of Recife, Pernambuco, that emerges as the lost violent, with a rate of 180.9 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. It is followed by Duque de Caxias, in Rio, with 120.7.
Countrywide, the number of murders rose from 54,696 in 2004 to 55,312 in 2005, a figure dramatised by the media by working out that it was tantamount to an average 150 murders per day — or, as put by the newspaper Correio Braziliense, that 'it exceeded the number of civilians exterminated in three years of war in Iraq.'
The security secretariat also reported that the number of drug-related crimes in Brazil rose by almost 6% in 2005, to 89,261, and that in that year, 'the chances of a Brazilian becoming a victim of robbery were 23 times greater than those of becoming a victim of murder.'
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Violent crime: the two extremes |
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| Most violent | Least violent | ||
| State | Rate | State | Rate |
| Rio de Janeiro | 61.5 | Piauí | 9.7 |
| Pernambuco | 58.2 | Santa Catarina | 11.5 |
| Paraná | 57.4 | Minas Gerais | 18.5 |
| Goiás | 46.0 | São Paulo | 18.9 |
| Source: Mapa da Violencia. | |||