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.

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

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.

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.

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;

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.

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.

Actual value and historical data chart for Brazil Intentional Homicides Per 100 000 People

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

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.

Homicide Dataset in Brazil

This dataset provides information on homicides in Brazil from 1989 to 2022. All sets have 4 columns:

• cod: Brazilian state code
• nome: Name or acronym of the state
• período: Year of counting
• valor: Number of homicides in the year

The main datasets are:

• homicidios.csv: Contains the total number of homicides in the country
• homicidios-por-armas-de-fogo.csv: Contains the number of homicides by firearm

The other datasets are subdivisions of these sets, such as the number of deaths of men, women, young people and other divisions.

The data comes from the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and is available at: IPEA Atlas of Violence.

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.

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.

Abstract In this paper we analyzed data from police investigations and trials of intentional homicides shelved in Belo Horizonte between 2003 and 2013 in order to understand the clearance’s determinants. As independent variables, we used the characteristics of victim, crimes’ attributes and police procedures. The results inform that the homicides features and police truth-finding methods (centered on the flagrante delicto and the presence of eyewitnesses) were the variables that explained the clearance likelihood. However, the length of time may affect this result, since police inquiries that are not completed within five year are not likely to be trialed.

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

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.

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

Abstract Background The homicide, besides being a public health problem, also reveals a complex context of social inequality that prevails in capitals and larges cities of Brazil. Objective The objective of this study was to analyze the socio-spatial context of intentional homicide victims in a capital of Brazilian Northeast. Method An ecological and documentary based study with a quantitative approach was carried out in João Pessoa, state of Paraíba, Brazil, in 2015, which considered 369 victims of homicide. Data analysis was carried out in light of descriptive statistics and spatial analysis. Results Victims of malice murder were predominantly male, young adults, non-white, singles, and less than seven years of studies. In addition, there was overlap, to a large extent of the areas where the victims of malice murder resided, with the map of the areas with the worst socioeconomic conditions. Conclusion Homicide has a substantial repercussion on the epidemiological context, in addition to its lethal characteristic. The issues surrounding them, in which important complex social issues appear, are broad and difficult to change in the short term.

The objective was to assess the effect of age, period, and birth cohort on the time trend in mortality from homicides in men in the states of the Northeast and Southeast regions of Brazil from 1980 to 2014. This was an ecological time trend study. PCA models were estimated using estimable functions in inference of the parameters. Mortality and population data were obtained from the Brazilian Health Informatics Department. State-by-state mortality rates from homicide were standardized by the direct method, with the world population as the standard, as proposed by the World Health Organization. The Northeast region recorded 317,711 deaths from homicides and the Southeast 544,640 deaths, corresponding, respectively, corresponding to mean standardized rates of 58.68 and 64.68 deaths per 100,000 men. The highest mean standardized mortality rates were observed in the states of Alagoas (157.74 deaths) and Pernambuco (109.58 deaths). All the states showed an increase in mortality up to the third decade of life, with a progressive reduction in the other age brackets. There was an upward trend in all the states of the Northeast and in Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo in the Southeast, while in the other states there was a downward trend. All the states showed an increase in the risk of death in the younger age brackets, except for the state of São Paulo, which showed the inverse profile. The current study’s findings may correlate with the process of discontinuity in the cohort, in which members of wide cohorts found less opportunity for access to employment, income, and education, thus increasing the risk of involvement in crime and death from homicide.

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.