Brazil & Southern Cone - November 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Latest homicide data puts Brazil in seventh position in the ranking of the world’s most violent countries, illustrating the continued scale of the internal security challenge in the country. Increased wealth has brought with it more crime against personal property, while drug-related crime is also on the up. Brazilian police remain trigger happy in comparison to their compatriots in other countries. Brazil women continue to endure extreme violence against them in and out of the home with more reported rapes than registered homicides last year and a continuing problem with domestic abuse across social classes.

Brazil’s total number of homicides topped 50,000 in 2012, the highest since 2008, according to the latest annual report from the Brazilian forum for public security (FBSP), which compiles the figures for the national public security secretariat (Senasp). Citing the report, the daily O Estado de São Paulo said there were 50,108 homicides in 2012, including manslaughter (47,136), deaths from assaults (1,810) and deaths from bodily injury (1,162). The estimated homicide rate was 25.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The (poorer) north and north east of the country registered the highest homicide rate, led by Alagoas state, with a rate of 61.8 (that was down 14%), followed by Pará (44.0), Ceará (42.5), Bahia (40.7) and Sergipe (40). Crimes against personal property are also on the increase, with a rise in burglaries, car theft, bank theft, lorry theft etc., again led by the north and north east. There were also more illegal drug-related incidents (including police apprehension of people carrying drugs), which the report suggested was evidence of the growth of drug trafficking in the country.

Brazil is also incarcerating more people, with a prison population of over half a million (515, 482), the fourth highest in the world after the US (2.24m), China (1.64m) and Russia (681,600). Brazilian police killed 1,890 people in 2012, according to the FBSP, an average of five a day. The numbers are concentrated in São Paulo, Rio Janeiro and Bahia and the figures cover 23 of the 27 states, so the actual number is likely higher. By way of comparison, in the US (where the population of 317m is 63% bigger than Brazil’s 200m), 410 people died in police-related incidents in 2012 (mostly shoot-outs).

Rousseff leads shock reaction to rape figures

President Dilma Rousseff tweeted in reaction to the news that the number of (reported) rapes in Brazil in 2012 was greater than the total official number of homicides. According to the FBSP report, there were 50,617 cases of reported rapes in the country last year, up 18.2% over 2011 and just above the estimated number of homicides.

“Violence against women is a disgrace that Brazilian society needs to overcome”, she said in a series of tweets on 5 November, noting that the reported figure is, “unhappily, underestimated”.

The president stressed, however, that the increased rate of reporting is partially thanks to the ‘180’ telephone service for the victims of sexual violence run by the women’s policy secretariat. She also stressed that the federal government will begin to roll out from 14 March 2014 (International Women’s Day) new ‘Women’s Houses’ in 26 state capitals. These new victims’ support units will incorporate under one roof a women’s commissariat, judges, legal teams and social workers to support victims, which can also be provided with on-site accommodation. Rousseff also noted the importance of the María da Penha Law, implemented by former president Lula da Silva in 2006, which for the first time put in place harsh sanctions for domestic abuse.

The president announced the ‘Women’s Houses’ initiative on 27 August before congress, having received a final report on gender violence running to over 1,000 pages prepared over 18 months by a congressional committee. Rousseff called for the report recommendations to be implemented so that women “get the support and protection of the state”. The senate president, Renan Calheiros, assured her that the parliament would work quickly to push through new 13 draft bills that among other things codify femicide as a crime.

The task facing the Brazilian authorities is immense. According to a brand new survey* examining public perceptions of violence against women, released in August by Data Popular and the Instituto Patricia Galvão, 70% of Brazilians feel that women suffer more violence in their own homes than in public places, with 50% believing that Brazilian women feel more unsafe at home than in public.

Over half of respondents (54%) said they knew a women that had been subjected to violence by a male partner and 56% knew of a man that had abused his female partner.

In terms of reporting domestic abuse, 86% said the María da Penha Law (which a full 88% of respondents had heard of) had encouraged more women to come forward. However, 85% also said that women denouncing crimes risked being killed by their abusers. Respondents also felt that despite the oficial efforts to penalise transgressors, by and large they still have impunity.

Notably, 69% of respondents said that that violence against women does not only take place in poor homes, illustrating the scale of the problem.

*For the survey, Percepção da Sociedade sobre Violência e assassinatos de mulheres, Data Popular surveyed 1,501 adults in 100 municipalities across the country on 10-18 May. The full survey is available at: http://www.spm.gov.br/publicacoes-teste/publicacoes/2013/livro_pesquisa_violencia.pdf

• Abortion

Abortion can only be legally performed in Brazil if the pregnancy puts the life of the woman in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of rape. In her election campaign in 2010 Dilma Rousseff was forced by conservative evangelicals to backtrack on her abortion stance (she considers it a medical issue and would widen the existing legislation). The daily O Globo noted on 6 November that there are only 65 medical centres in Brazil where rape victims can legally terminate unwanted pregnancies resulting from the crime.

Rio - over 700,000 security cameras ahead of 2014

A new report released on 11 November put the number of security cameras in Rio, host city to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, at over 700,000, or one for every nine residents, with cameras “on every corner in the city centre”; in all high end and mid-level residential buildings and increasingly also in poorer areas including the city’s main ‘pacified’ favelas.

Indeed, police in the favela of Rocinha suspected of killing a local resident in July (whose body has yet to turn up) deactivated cameras that the police themselves had installed in the neighbourhood in an effort to cover up their crime.

Most security cameras (700,000) are private, with only about 1,000 installed by the city authorities, prompting some debate about the right to privacy. The report was compiled by Ser-Tel, a local Rio de Janeiro security consulting company.