Brazil & Southern Cone - June 2026

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has launched a new initiative dubbed the ‘Brazil against organised crime’ programme, which will focus on priorities such as combatting money laundering, improving the prison system, strengthening homicide investigations, and curbing arms trafficking. The move comes amid growing public concern over insecurity ahead of the presidential election in October, in which Lula is expected to face senator Flávio Bolsonaro (Partido Liberal, PL), who is considered the main candidate of the Brazilian right and who is also likely to push a tough-on-crime stance to win over voters.

“Today’s act is a signal to organised crime that soon they will no longer hold any territory,” Lula said at a ceremony in the presidential palace on 12 May. “The territory will be returned to the Brazilian people in every city and every state,” he stated. During the ceremony, Lula signed the decree to launch the programme which will provide R$11bn (US$2.18bn) to buy new equipment and set up new facilities for various policing institutions.

In 2026, R$388.9m will be allocated for the establishment of new integrated task forces between federal and state institutions dedicated to monitoring and disrupting the financial networks of organised crime. A total of R$330.6m will cover upgrades to prisons, such as new scanners, radars, metal detectors, X-rays, phone signal jammers, and security cameras, among other equipment. A further R$201m will be used for improving the quality of forensic labs and other facilities used in homicide investigations, with the purchase of new equipment such as autopsy tables, refrigerated vehicles to transport bodies, and DNA testing kits. Meanwhile, R$145.2m will be allocated for the creation of a new anti-arms trafficking network, which will have special police stations with new equipment such as tracking devices and surveillance tools, as well as drones and armoured vehicles. The remaining R$10bn of the programme will be for a special government credit line to finance security-related procurement that can be offered to state and local authorities.

Media reports framed Lula’s new programme as a clear attempt at boosting popularity, with all the hallmarks and buzzwords that have been repeated by his government in recent years, highlighting the need to improve police intelligence. The initiative promises large sums to buy new equipment for police investigators to essentially do what they are already doing. A cynical view is that this is the equivalent of Lula inaugurating a high-visibility infrastructure project that is unlikely to deliver significant concrete gains, but at least it signals to voters that he is willing to throw money at problems that they care about.

The R$10bn credit line for state and municipal governments to buy more drones and armoured vehicles also offers no guarantee that the new equipment will be used wisely. For state governors who take pride in being security hardliners and are willing to defend ineffective but highly visible police crackdowns on favela neighbourhoods, such as deploying raids of armed police operatives to arrest alleged drug dealers rather than the real masterminds running criminal enterprises, all this new equipment could serve to further enable a policing approach that has been the norm for decades among many state military police forces (such as the Rio de Janeiro state police) and has resulted in frequent concerns over police brutality [SSR-25-12]. For any state governors or local mayors who are planning to run for re-election or for a seat in congress, or are seeking to get one of their allies elected in the October general elections, more drones, scanners, and vehicles for police could just serve as new items they can display at public events to trumpet their own tough-on-crime credentials.

Other initiatives

The decision to sign a new security-related decree comes amid uncertainty over the Lula government’s main legislative proposal aimed at facilitating investigations into organised crime: the constitutional amendment proposal known as the ‘PEC da Segurança’ which aims to boost integration between federal and state law enforcement. The PEC was approved by the lower chamber of congress in March but, at the time of writing, the senate has not yet approved it. While the government’s priority security initiative remains stalled, the main bill backed by right-wing opposition groups, the so-called ‘PL Antifacção’ (anti-gang bill), was approved by congress in February and promulgated by Lula in March. The anti-gang bill mandates a raft of measures, including tougher prison sentences for gang members as well as other regulations and mechanisms facilitating the seizure of criminal assets.

The anti-gang bill was originally drafted by the Lula government last year. However, the rapporteur assigned to oversee its passage through the lower chamber of congress was security hardliner Guilherme Derrite, a member of the conservative Progressistas party (PP), who previously served as the security secretary (2023-2025) in the right-wing state government of São Paulo led by Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos). With Derrite steering the legislation, it became associated with the right-wing opposition rather than with the governing coalition.

When the bill was reviewed in the senate, the rapporteur was moderate conservative lawmaker Alessandro Vieira, of the big tent party Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (MDB). Although not known to be firmly aligned with parties further to the right of the political spectrum such as the PL and Republicanos, Vieira spent several months in late 2025 and early 2026 ramping up his tough-on-crime rhetoric, possibly with an eye on a bid to retain his senate seat for the constituency of Sergipe state. Any congressional role related to security measures could have served as a boost for this political goal. Indeed, Vieira was also the rapporteur of a senate inquiry (CPI) running from November-April that aimed to investigate the structures of organised crime groups, although the inquiry did not produce a final report that all CPI committee members could agree on.

All these congressional initiatives over the past few months focused on security measures indicate that politicians of varying political stripes are seeking to push the narrative that it is their party and allies doing the most to address the public’s concerns over crime. Unfortunately for Lula, lawmakers from the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and other allied left-wing parties do not have one flagship legislative achievement regarding security that the president can claim ownership over and can tout on the campaign trail, apart from the stalled PEC da Segurança.

A potential security reform that Lula proposed on 12 May was the creation of a new government ministry dedicated to security, created from splitting up the justice and public security ministry. However, he said that the legislation to enact this would come only after the PEC da Segurança is approved. “I have always refused to approve a public security ministry while we have not defined what the role of the federal government would be in [the public security system],” he said, adding more arguments in defence of the PEC by saying “we feel the need for the federal government to actively participate, but with clear criteria… we don’t want to occupy the space of governors and state police”. This was likely addressing the long-running criticisms of various state governors who had previously described the PEC da Segurança as a proposal to effectively centralise law enforcement operations under the aegis of federal authorities and sideline state police.

Big tech decree

President Lula has sought to tighten content moderation rules for social media platforms, which he has framed as a security issue. On 20 May he signed a decree requiring social media companies to proactively remove harmful content on their platforms, or else face the risk of legal action. This corresponds to a ruling by the supreme court (STF) last year which declared that a social media company can be held liable for content on their platform produced by third parties.

Institutional reform

On 22 May Lula ramped up his efforts to pressure the senate to approve the stalled PEC da Segurança, the government’s main security legislation. In an interview on public broadcaster TV Brasil, Lula made a direct appeal to senate president Davi Alcolumbre to table the legislation, arguing that this reform would strengthen institutions such as the federal police (PF) and federal highway police (PRF).