In 2024, six of the eight Brazilian cities with the highest homicide rates were in the Northeast. Feira da Santana led the ranking of the most violent city in Brazil, with a murder rate of ***** per 100,000 inhabitants. It was followed followed by Recife, with a homicide rate of more than ** per 100,000 inhabitants. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Feira da Santana was the **** most deadly city.

In 2024, Recife was the selected metropolis with the largest number of homicides in Brazil. That year, there were ***** homicides registered in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, ranking second in the list of selected cities. Salvador was the fourth city in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest number of homicides.

The Rio de Janeiro (RJ) municipality presents one of the highest crime rates in Brazil. However, since the 2000s, a significant reduction of lethal crimes has been observed. Given this scenario, the aim of this study is to analyze the factors that determined this phenomenon. Among them, it seeks to assess the effects of the Pacifying Police Unit (Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora - UPP). To this end, the statistical error correction vector (ECV) method was used. This study allowed for the analysis of short- and long-term relationships between crime rates and variables associated with economic activity and police action. The applied dataset comprises the period between April 2002 and August 2019. The main results indicate that UPP implementation contributed to lethal crime reduction in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, the results show that coercive police action tends to increase crime rates.

In 2024, the highest amount of crimes recorded in the state of São Paulo was for thievery, excluding vehicle thievery, with more than half a million cases. The second most common crime was robberies, with nearly 189,000 incidences.

In 2024, the highest homicide rate among 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries surveyed was in Haiti, with around 62 murders committed per 100,000 inhabitants. Trinidad and Tobago came in second, with a homicide rate of 46, while Honduras ranked seventh, with 25. In the same year, the lowest rate was recorded in El Salvador, with a homicide rate of 1.9 per 100,000 inhabitants. A violence-ridden region Violence and crime are some of the most pressing problems affecting Latin American society nowadays. More than 40 of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world are located in this region, as well as one of the twenty countries with the least peace in the world according to the Global Peace Index. Despite governments’ large spending on security and high imprisonment rates, drug and weapon trafficking, organized crime, and gangs have turned violence into an epidemic that affects the whole region and a solution to this issue appears to be hardly attainable. The cost of violence in Mexico Mexico stands out as an example of the great cost that violence inflicts upon a country, since beyond claiming human lives, it also affects everyday life and has a negative impact on the economy. Mexicans have a high perceived level of insecurity, as they do not only fear becoming victims of homicide, but also of other common crimes, such as assault or rape. Such fear prevents people from performing everyday activities, for instance, going out at night, taking a taxi or going to the movies or the theater. Furthermore, the economic toll of violence in Mexico is more than considerable. For example, the cost of homicide and violent crime amounted to 2099.8 and 1778.1 billion Mexican pesos in 2023, respectively.

In 2023, approximately 50,000 cases of violence against women were reported in the city of Rio de Janeiro. With over 18,000 cases, psychological violence, such as threatening behavior, harassment, and humiliation, was the category with the most reported cases, while property damage was the least reported category with fewer than 2,200 cases.

The annual robbery rate in the city of Rio de Janeiro has stabilized since 2020, after it more than doubled from roughly *** robberies per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012 to almost ***** in 2017. The sharpest decline in the robbery rate occurred between 2019 and 2020 when it fell from ***** to below 1,000 thefts, reflecting a decrease of approximately ** percent. In 2024, the annual robbery rate was *** thefts per 100,000 inhabitants, however this still equates to almost one percent of the population being robbed each year.

The number of people murdered in Mexico amounted to almost 33,300 in 2021, a slightly lower figure to the one registered one year earlier. Mexico ranked as the second Latin American country with the highest number of intentional homicides in 2022, only exceeded by Brazil.