Brazil & Southern Cone - March 2026

Preliminary annual crime data for 2025 published by Brazil’s justice and public security ministry show that last year had the lowest number of homicides since 2015, and that murders have been declining every year for the last five years. However, opinion polls continue to show that crime remains among the top public concerns and the public still expresses pessimism over how authorities have been dealing with the issue. 

Brazil’s homicide rate for 2025 was 14.74 murders per 100,000 people, and the total number of homicides nationwide stood at 31,448. This marks a 10.5% decrease compared to the 35,138 murders registered for 2024, a 24.7% drop compared to 41,727 murders in 2020, and a 31.6% decrease compared to 45,958 murders in 2015. In terms of regional variation, Brazil’s northern and north-eastern regions remained the deadliest parts of the country in 2025, with homicide rates of 18.57 murders per 100,000 people and 25.64 per 100,000, respectively. Last year’s total murder tally in the north was 3,492 killings and the total for the northeast was 14,677. However, even these regions with murder rates well above the national average have been seeing declines over the past decade. The 2025 homicide rate for the north is lower than the rates of 21.43 killings per 100,000 people in 2024, 25.41 per 100,000 in 2020, and 33.86 per 100,000 in 2015. The latest annual figure for the northeast marks a decrease from 28.13 killings per 100,000 people in 2024, 34.0 per 100,000 in 2020, and 38.98 per 100,000 in 2015.

Despite the declines in murders, survey data released by polling firm AtlasIntel has shown that crime remains a major public concern. In a poll released on 26 February, 38.8% of survey respondents said that crime levels in the country were ‘high’ and 49.6% said that crime was ‘very high’. When asked how the federal government has been handling public security, 17.8% said ‘badly’ and 35.2% said ‘very badly’. And yet, when asked about their own recent experiences with crime, most respondents (59.8%) said they did not witness any crime in the previous three months. Of the respondents who said that they had witnessed a crime, the two most common crimes were drug trafficking, with 61.6% of respondents saying they had seen this being committed, and phone robberies, with 59.1% saying they had witnessed this.

Given that the national homicide rate continues to decline, the public’s fears about crime seem to be mainly driven by other non-lethal crimes, such as robberies and drug dealing. When asked which security-related problems are getting better or worse, 85% of respondents said that drug trafficking was getting worse and 79% said they felt that thefts and robberies were on the rise. Although the justice and public security ministry’s database does not include annual data for robberies of mobile phones and other everyday possessions, the figures for 2025 show that cases of drug trafficking have been ticking up. Last year a total of 1,631 tonnes (t) of drugs were seized by authorities, up 5.23% compared to 2024, and the number of drug trafficking cases totalled 215,716, up 17.05% on the previous year. Compared to a decade earlier, drug seizures in 2025 registered a 254.1% increase compared to the 461t of drugs confiscated in 2015, while the number of drug trafficking cases rose by 43.3% compared to the 150,717 cases ten years earlier.

The survey’s question about which problems seem to be getting worse is not an exact indicator of which crimes the public is most worried about, but the fact that the government’s official data shows that drug seizures and cases of drug possession or distribution are on the rise, while homicides are declining, show that concerns over drug trafficking could be a contributor to the public’s feelings of insecurity. In response to this concern, many politicians across the ideological spectrum have declared their intentions to prioritise the fight against the country’s powerful drug trafficking organisations.

AtlasIntel’s data also indicates that the topic of crime is a key influencer of how people might vote in the October 2026 general elections, so any potential candidate hoping to increase their popularity is likely to seek to boost their tough-on-crime credentials. When asked how much the issue of crime will influence their vote, 62.8% of survey respondents said that crime is important but not the only consideration, and 27.6% said that crime-fighting policies are among the most important factors to decide their vote. Only 1.4% said that they cared more about other issues and only 8.2% said that crime is not an issue that would influence their vote.

The significance that insecurity concerns have on political discourse could push more politicians to focus their public rhetoric on the issue of crime, but the crime-fighting pledges of a candidate could be met with scepticism, with many survey respondents in AtlasIntel’s poll expressing low trust in the commitment of politicians to seriously reduce crime rates. More than half (52.7%) said that some politicians are committed to combat crime, but most are not, while 46.7% said that politicians are not truly worried about crime and only exploit the public’s fear for electoral purposes. This low trust in politicians to address their concerns could suggest that voters could be wary of charlatans who make ambitious pledges that might be difficult to deliver on, or it could indicate a widespread frustration with established career politicians – this could mean that populist outsider candidates might perform well or it could mean that a general disillusionment with politicians in general might result in more blank votes. 

Tough policing

Regarding what policies the public might want to see implemented, AtlasIntel’s poll showed that the most popular option was ‘more rigorous laws on crime’, with 57.7% of respondents selecting it as a policy priority. This might suggest that there is some public appetite for the hardline policies often backed by right-wing politicians such as tough police crackdowns. However, the poll specifically included some elements of the so-called ‘mano dura’ (iron fist) security approach, and survey respondents did not express high levels of support for these measures. Only 29.2% backed ‘mass incarceration of criminals’, 23.9% supported ‘giving police free rein to deal with criminals’, and 16.6% supported ‘allowing certain human rights or civil liberties to be curtailed to punish criminals’. In fact, a common pillar of left-wing crime reduction approaches, the prevention of crime by ‘investment in education and social assistance’, received more approval, with 32.2% support.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is planning to run for re-election in October, and he has thus far avoided calling for hardline police crackdowns, but he has been seeking to highlight his government’s commitment to combating organised crime. The measures that he emphasises in his rhetoric include improving police intelligence and boosting cross-border cooperation to intercept trafficking networks. However, AtlasIntel’s data indicates that these technocratic solutions might not be a vote-winning message that would strongly resonate with the public. In the section of potential policy solutions, ‘investment in intelligence to investigate and solve crimes’ only received 38.6% support.

Police violence

On 4 February international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report in which it criticised the high levels of police violence in Brazil. The NGO’s Brazil director, César Muñoz, was cited in the report as saying that “public security strategies based on unchecked use of lethal force by police have failed again and again to make Brazilian neighbourhoods safer, and instead have resulted in more violence and insecurity”, and he called on candidates in the 2026 elections to make proposals that “effectively protect people’s rights”. According to HRW, Brazilian police killed 5,920 people between January and November 2025, up from 5,725 during the same months in 2024.