Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2026

“Brazil has reached mid-2026 with public security as the main public concern,” think tank Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP) wrote in its latest annual crime report, which was published on 23 July. It went on to state that “the debate on this subject has unfolded amid a deeply polarised political agenda” driven by the “binary logic of electoral rhetoric”. With Brazil holding general elections in October, candidates have been signalling to voters that fighting crime will be a top priority, although FBSP has expressed regret that there has been “more noise than policy”.

In the introduction to its annual report, FBSP recognised that “violence has returned to the top of the agenda for Brazilian citizens” and it is therefore “expected and legitimate that this concern takes centre stage in the electoral debate of 2026”. However, it also warned that “public discussion on violence is gradually drifting away from what scientific evidence, international experience, and security professionals themselves know to be effective”.  

Despite persistently high public concern, the data and analyses in the report highlight that violent deaths in Brazil continue to decrease. In 2025, Brazil’s intentional violent killings (MVI) totalled 40,775, down from 44,220 killings the previous year. Last year marked the fifth consecutive annual drop in killings and was also the lowest figure since 2012, the year that FBSP began recording the data under its current methodology. The MVI rate last year also reached a record-low of 19.1 killings per 100,000 people, which is down 8.2% compared to 2024 and down 31.0% compared to 2012. Another common public fear is gunpoint robbery, but FBSP’s annual report shows that not only violent killings but also robberies have decreased. Last year Brazil’s rate of robberies on the street stood at 122.0 cases per 100,000 people, which is down 23.4% compared to 2024. The rate of mobile phone robberies in 2025 was 144.7 cases per 100,000, down 18.6% on the previous year.

FBSP’s focus on the reduction on these crime rates did not seek to dismiss the public’s concerns, rather the think tank has called for a more focused, data-driven approach to discussions on tackling crime. Although the report suggested that factors such as the role of the media and the sensationalised coverage of crime stories could be feeding a “moral panic” and the dissemination of “socially shared narrative constructs and sentiments [which are] not always backed up by factual data”, FBSP insisted that it is possible for the “fear of crime and the current security situation” to be addressed by developing “data-driven public security policies and crafting communication strategies that, rather than stoking panic, acknowledge feelings of fear and insecurity and place them in the context of available data”.

For example, when discussing the figures on MVIs, the report emphasised the importance of looking at exactly what type of violent killings are on the decline and which are on the rise. The MVI indicator comprises various types of violent crimes, including homicides, femicides, deadly robberies, and deaths occurring during police interventions. Whilst homicides were down 9.8%, femicides and police lethality continue to rise. Last year police forces killed 6,602 people, which is up 5.4% compared to 2024 and marks the highest figure registered since FBSP began recording this metric in 2016.

Meanwhile, femicides were up 4% in annual terms, with a total of 1,571 femicides in 2025, which marks highest figure registered since 2016 and the fourth consecutive year to register a yearly rise in femicides. It is notable that, while femicides are on the rise, the total number of female murder victims has been decreasing in recent years. Brazil’s 2015 femicide law distinguishes a femicide from a murder based on contextual factors, with a killing being classified as a femicide if there are signs of gender discrimination and misogyny or if the murder was committed amid a context of domestic abuse. The FBSP annual report suggests that this could indicate a trend of less violence in the streets or public places but more violence in private settings, with most femicide victims being killed in domestic spaces by their partners. In 2025, 60.9% of femicide perpetrators were the woman’s current partner and 18.9% of perpetrators were ex-partners.

Election pledges

Although police brutality remains a polarising issue, femicides has emerged in this year’s election as a priority that both the left and right are highlighting [SSR-26-03]. This could suggest that the frequent calls by think tanks and civil society groups such as FBSP, which have long demanded better measures to prevent gender violence, might be paying off. As of mid-August, the start of the official campaigning period, the two frontrunners in Brazil’s presidential election are President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, both of whom have signalled their commitment to reducing femicides.

The campaign manifestos released by Lula and Bolsonaro in August both included pledges to expand Brazil’s current mechanisms for monitoring domestic abuse and providing shelter and support for domestic abuse survivors. However, there were some details in the manifestos that illustrated the fundamental differences of left-wing and right-wing politicians amid Brazil’s polarised political debates on public security. Lula’s campaign has framed femicides and gender violence as a deep-rooted cultural and economic problem, which demands broader solutions rather than just immediate responses and prevention protocols. His manifesto not only pledged more security efforts but also highlighted the importance of giving women more financial independence and boosting programmes aimed at gender pay equality and improving employment prospects for women. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s manifesto placed a much stronger emphasis on incarceration and calls for tougher penalties and sentences for domestic abusers and perpetrators of femicides.

Regarding other security-related policy proposals, Lula’s pledges focus more on working through established government mechanisms and institutional processes and improving police intelligence capabilities, while Bolsonaro has expressed a more hardline stance. During his first official campaign rally on 16 August, Bolsonaro said that he would treat Brazilian criminal gangs as terrorist groups, which would follow the lead of the US government, which has already designated Brazil’s most powerful criminal organisations as terrorist groups [SSR-26-07]. Similarly, other right-wing candidates such as Ronaldo Caiado and Romeu Zema have also been using terms like ‘terrorism’ or ‘narco-terrorism’ in their public discussions and speeches on the campaign trail.

Although Lula’s campaign rhetoric has so far appeared to be more aligned with the FBSP’s emphasis on intelligence gathering and data-driven policy approaches, the think tank’s report also expressed regret that several institutional reforms that Lula has backed have not yet amounted to concrete action. For instance, in Lula’s manifesto and during his first campaign rally on 16 August he promised that he would split up the ministry of justice and public security to create a new ministry that will specialise on security. At the time of writing, Lula has not signed a decree to create a new ministry. National daily Folha de São Paulo reported on 29 August that this measure might only see progress after the October elections, suggesting that the rhetoric about reorganising government institutions might be more of attempt to win votes than a definite, immediate plan.

Crime concerns

In May this year, FBSP released figures from a survey about crime concerns it carried out in partnership with pollster Datafolha. In the survey, respondents were given a list of 13 crimes and dangerous situations, and the ones that ranked as the most worrying were being killed during a robbery, armed robbery, and online scams. The highest concern was online scams, with 83.2% of responses declaring this as a worry, ahead of armed robbery (82.3%) and death during robbery (80.7%).

Maria da Penha law

On 19 August the supreme court (STF) ruled to expand the application of Brazil’s 2006 Maria da Penha law, a landmark piece of legislation that aims to prevent gender violence. The top court declared the women should receive protection from the State even if there is no intimate relationship with her aggressor. This is expected to broaden the implementation of the law beyond domestic abuse cases involving violence committed by a partner or family member.