In 2024, Brazil's homicide rate reached **** incidents per 100,000 people. This is the lowest figure recorded in the country since 2012.

The homicide rate registered in Brazil impacts ethnicities very differently. Whereas the number of homicides per 100,000 black or brown people increased to ** percent from 2006 to 2017, the homicide rate of non-black or brown individuals declined to nearly ***percent in the same period. In 2023, the homicide rate for the black ethnic group decreased compared to the previous year.

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.

Content

This dataset contain official crime statistics from São Paulo state cities (Brazil) and were prepared based on information available on the Civil State Police statistics site: http://www.ssp.sp.gov.br/Estatistica/Pesquisa.aspx

• Period available:

  • Crime Monthly Occurrences and Policy productivity: 2001 - May, 2021 Note: in both datasets, decimal separator is a point (".") .

  • Crime rates (annual rates available): 1999 -2020 (available for some of the cities) Note: in this dataset, decimal separator is a comma (",") .

• Data and labels in brazilian portuguese.

• Information about crime type interpretation (available only in brazilian portuguese) in: http://www.ssp.sp.gov.br/Estatistica/download/manual.pdf

• Datasets prepared with Selenium (webscraping) and Pandas libraries in Python.

Author: Dalciana B. Waller https://github.com/DBWALLER

Historical dataset showing Brazil crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2020.

Measuring homicides across the world helps us understand violent crime and how people are affected by interpersonal violence.

But measuring homicides is challenging. Even homicide researchers do not always agree on whether the specific cause of death should be considered a homicide. Even when they agree on what counts as a homicide, it is difficult to count all of them.

In many countries, national civil registries do not certify most deaths or their cause. Besides lacking funds and personnel, a body has to be found to determine whether a death has happened. Authorities may also struggle to distinguish a homicide from a similar cause of death, such as an accident.

Law enforcement and criminal justice agencies collect more data on whether a death was unlawful — but their definition of unlawfulness may differ across countries and time.

Estimating homicides where neither of these sources is available or good enough is difficult. Estimates rely on inferences from similar countries and contextual factors that are based on strong assumptions. So how do researchers address these challenges and measure homicides?

In our work on homicides, we provide data from five main sources:

The WHO Mortality Database (WHO-MD)1 The Global Study on Homicide by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)2 The History of Homicide Database by Manuel Eisner (20033 and 20144) The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)5 The WHO Global Health Estimates (WHO-GHE)6 These sources all report homicides, cover many countries and years, and are frequently used by researchers and policymakers. They are not entirely separate, as they partially build upon each other.

In 2024, Pernambuco reported the highest homicide rate in the country, at nearly **** occurrences per 100,000 inhabitants. Ceará, in the country's northeastern region, ranked second, with **** homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Meanwhile, in 2022, Bahia also ranked first in numbers of homicides, with around ***** occurrences reported.

Context

Brazil has a very powerful Freedom of Information law which allows any citizen to request any data from the government which is not restricted, and where these restrictions are well defined exceptions. But still, having the right to request the information does not mean it is easy to get it. Bureaucracy and ignorance of the law gets in the way many times. In order to encourage the government to put their databases in order and to inspire people to have the courage to ask the government for information, we made a massive request of information, for the complete dataset of crime data available for the last 10 years, in the biggest city of South America.

Content

This dataset contains structured data about all crime occurrences that have been acted upon by the PM, the main police force in Sao Paulo. The dataset is not consistent in its completeness, as some of the towns comprising the Greater Sao Paulo were slow in collecting full data. It also does not contain the actual historic of each crime report, as that would violate privacy.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the prompt assistance from the SSP (Secretaria de Seguranca Publica), for providing the data with minimal resistance.

Inspiration

Primarily we would like to see a visualisation of this data, so that the people can have an idea of how crime has evolved in their city, which crimes are more prevalent in which areas, etc. In addition, any model which can predict at what times and where the police is most needed would be helpful, as this can then be sent to the SSP to help them in planning.

Historical dataset showing Brazil murder/homicide rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2020.

In 2024, the number of homicides in Brazil reached its lowest level of the entire period under review, with approximately 39,000 occurrences. By comparison, there were more than 60,000 homicides in the country in 2017.

The number of black and Pardo Brazilian people murdered in Brazil had been increasing throughout the years up until 2017. In 2023, around 33,350 black and Pardo citizens were killed in the South American country, down from almost 35,500 recorded one year before.

Brazil BR: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data was reported at 22.384 Ratio in 2020. This records an increase from the previous number of 20.810 Ratio for 2019. Brazil BR: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data is updated yearly, averaging 26.021 Ratio from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2020, with 31 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 30.593 Ratio in 2017 and a record low of 16.656 Ratio in 1992. Brazil BR: Intentional Homicides: per 100,000 People data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Brazil – Table BR.World Bank.WDI: Social: Health Statistics. Intentional homicides are estimates of unlawful homicides purposely inflicted as a result of domestic disputes, interpersonal violence, violent conflicts over land resources, intergang violence over turf or control, and predatory violence and killing by armed groups. Intentional homicide does not include all intentional killing; the difference is usually in the organization of the killing. Individuals or small groups usually commit homicide, whereas killing in armed conflict is usually committed by fairly cohesive groups of up to several hundred members and is thus usually excluded.;UN Office on Drugs and Crime's International Homicide Statistics database.;Weighted average;

Abstract Homicide is the most serious form of violence with a negative impact on the population. It is broadly studied in the scientific field and disseminated in print and in the virtual media. The scope of this article is to locate papers in national and international journals, seeking the synthesis of knowledge and the incorporation of the applicability of the results of significant studies. It involved an integrative review of the SciELO, PubMed and LILACS databases of articles published between 2006 and 2016. The following key words were researched: Homicide and Brazil. The publications were selected by the title, abstract and methodology. For homicide and health studies in Brazil, 427 papers were found, of which 98 were selected. There were publications with emphasis on the national scenario, followed by the state of São Paulo and Pernambuco. The quantitative study was the most used, with collection of secondary data. The papers dealt with homicides in the population in general (48%), Femicide (14.3%) and Social Determinants (7.1%). The Brazilian scientific production on homicide and health is on the increase. It is important that researchers, analysts and editors turn their attention to the development of papers in this area, aiming to improve the quality of published articles.

In Brazil, crime rates have been very high at least since the 1980s. There is a social perception that adolescents are the main responsibles to increase these rates, although there is no scientifical evidence to support it. Thus, as a way to try to reduce crime rates, congressmen proposed to amend the constitution to lower the age of criminal majority, which nowadays is 18 years old. According to Neil Hazel (2008), "criminal majority is the age at which the criminal justice system processes offenders as adults" (p. 7).

This dataset contains all Proposals to Amend the Constitution on lowering the ACM in Brazil, since 1989 to 2015. We collected them directly from Chamber of Deputies and Federal Senate's websites and put them together to make easier to researchers and stakeholders find them. Every proposals are divided in four parts. In the first part, there are the main information about the proposals, for example, the document's number and year of publication, its authors, subject, and which Constitution's article should be modified. In the second one, there is the new article redaction proposed by its author. In the third one (justification), there is a text the document's authors argue why the proposal should be approved by the National Congress. Finally, the fourth part contains the congressmen signatures who support the proposal.

Our main purpose is to provide dataset to researchers and stakeholders to content analyze these proposals and the congressmen justifications to do so.

In 2022, the state of Bahia reported the largest number of homicides in Brazil. That year, ***** homicides were recorded in this northeastern state. Bahia was followed by the state of Rio de Janeiro, with ***** murders reported. Despite that, the number of homicides in Brazil reached the lowest figure that year since at least 2006, totaling ******. Homicide targets Data shows that homicides affected men disproportionaly more than women in this South American country. Considering the over ****** homicides registered in Brazil in 2022, nearly ** percent had men as victims. Again, it is important to remember the deterioration of data quality, specially in the case of femicides: there was a woman victim of violent death with no clear cause for every woman victim of homicide in Brazil. In that regard, the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Rondônia had the highest femicide rates. At least ***** of every 100,000 women who lived in those territories were murdered on account of their gender in 2023. Not only women, but the number of black and brown people murdered in Brazil had been growing throughout the years up until 2017, revealing that minorities are increasingly becoming the targets of violence. In 2022, nearly ****** people of color were killed in Brazil, over ***** times the number of non-black or non-brown people. Police Violence Police brutality has been gaining attention from the media, especially after George Floyd violent death in 2020. In Brazil, police violence, particularly in poor areas, such as favelas, is an old and well-known problem that affects society as a whole. Figures have shown that the number of civilians killed by police officers in Brazil surpassed ***** in both 2021 and 2022. Coincidentally, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, the Brazilian states with the highest number of homicides, are also the ones with the highest number of people killed by the police. In Rio, the state with the second-highest figure, people of color were the main victims of deadly police interventions.

BackgroundHomicide kills more people than war globally and is associated with income inequality. In Brazil, one of the most unequal countries of the world, the homicide rate is four times higher than the world average. Establishing if the Brazilian conditional cash transfer programme [Bolsa Familia Programme (BFP)], the largest in the world, is associated with a reduction in the rate of homicide is relevant for violence prevention programs. We aimed to assess the effect of BFP coverage on homicide and hospitalization rates from violence.MethodsBFP coverage and rates of homicide (overall and disaggregated by sex and age) and hospitalizations from violence from all 5,507 Brazilian municipalities between 2004 and 2012 were explored using multivariable negative binomial regression models with fixed effect for panel data. Robustness of results was explored using sensitivity analyses such as difference-in-difference models.FindingsHomicide rates and hospitalization from violence decreased as BFP coverage in the target population increased. For each percent increase in the uptake of the BFP, the homicide rate decreased by 0.3% (Rate Ratio:0.997; 95%CI:0.996–0.997) and hospitalizations from violence by 0.4% (RR: 0.996;95%CI:0.995–0.996). Rates of homicide and hospitalizations from violence were also negatively associated with the duration of BFP coverage. When, coverage of the target population was at least 70% for one-year, hospitalizations from violence decreased by 8%; two-years 14%, three-years 20%, and four years 25%.InterpretationOur results support the hypothesis that conditional cash transfer programs might have as an additional benefit the prevention of homicides and hospitalizations from violence. Social protection interventions could contribute to decrease levels of violence in low-and-middle-income-countries through reducing poverty and/or socioeconomic inequalities.

The Brazilian Crimes Dataset (BCD) contains crime records and pre-processing procedures used in our experiments on crime analysis and prediction [1]. In particular, we proposed an approach to predict crimes and evaluated it by using crime records crawled from the brazilian web site Onde Fui Roubado.

Please consider citing the following references if you found this dataset useful:

[1] Úrsula Rosa Monteiro de Castro, Marcos Wander Rodrigues, Wladmir Cardoso Brandão. Predicting crime by exploiting supervised learning on heterogeneous data. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS'20), 2020.

[2] Úrsula Rosa Monteiro de Castro, Wladmir Cardoso Brandão. (2020). BCD: Brazilian Crimes Dataset (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo.

FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System (FBI NIBRS) crime data for Brazil Police Department (City) in Indiana, including incidents, statistics, demographics, and detailed incident information.

In 2024, there were a total of 2,532 shootings registered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. March was the month with the most shootings in each of the given years, except for 2024 - in that year, there were 254 occurrences, or about 10 percent of the year's total. The lowest number of shootings in the given period occurred in August 2023 when 153 cases were recorded. Police violence in Rio In 2022, the Supreme Court ordered the state government of Rio de Janeiro to come up with a plan to reduce police lethality, as the level of violence in police actions was deemed unacceptable, due to high numbers of casualties and human rights violations. The number of civilians killed as a result of police intervention more than quadrupled between 2013 and 2019, reaching a record number of 1,814 that year. Despite the decrease in comparison to 2019, every year from 2020 to 2022 saw more than 1,200 civilians being killed. Furthermore, it is deemed that there is structural racism in the actions of security forces. For instance, 80 percent of the deaths caused by police interventions in the state during 2023 were of people of color. Shootings and massacres in Rio Civil society and public institutions have made proposals to alleviate this situation. One of them is the ADPF 635 (Allegation of Violation of a Fundamental Precept), also known as ADPF Favelas Case, presented by the Brazilian Socialist Party, and whose preliminary approval took place in June 2020. The measure restricted unplanned police operations in the favelas during the pandemic. Despite its frequent violations, it showed evident results. Shootings fell from 7,368 in 2019 to less than 3,000 in 2024. Over one third of documented shootings in 2024 were due to police operations, while 288 were motivated by murder or attempted murder, the second most common reason. In March 2022, the government of Rio de Janeiro published a plan to reduce deaths during police operations. That year, the State of Rio de Janeiro recorded 92 fewer deaths than the previous year, and the number has fallen every year since.

Although Brazil remains severely affected by civil violence, the state of São Paulo has made significant inroads into fighting criminality. In the last decade, São Paulo has witnessed a 70% decline in homicide rates, a result that policy-makers attribute to a series of crime-reducing measures implemented by the state government. While recent academic studies seem to confirm this downward trend, no estimation of the total impact of state policies on homicide rates currently exists. The present article fills this gap by employing the synthetic control method to compare these measures against an artificial São Paulo. The results indicate a large drop in homicide rates in actual São Paulo when contrasted with the synthetic counterfactual, with about 20,000 lives saved during the period. The theoretical usefulness of the synthetic control method for public policy analysis, the role of the Primeiro Comando da Capital as a causal mediator, and the practical implications of the security measures taken by the São Paulo state government are also discussed.