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 the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the population in 2021 was composed by 63.7 percent of people who identified as white. However, this ethnic group only represented 31 percent of the civilians killed by security agents. Meanwhile, 69 percent of civilian deaths caused by the police were black people, who constituted a little more than a third of the state's population. Moreover, the share of people of black ethnicity killed by the police in the state's capital reached nearly 70 percent of the total that 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 55.63 per 100,000 inhabitants. It was followed followed by Recife, with a homicide rate of more than 41 per 100,000 inhabitants. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Feira da Santana was the 22nd most deadly city.

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.

In 2023, São Paulo was the Brazilian state which had the highest number of car thefts and break-ins in, totaling approximately 131,730. It was followed by Rio de Janeiro state with 38,825 cases reported. Over 354,000 vehicle thefts and break-ins in the South American country during 2023 were recorded.

During the Brazilian Carnival season of 2020, more than 2.4 thousand were arrested throughout the state of São Paulo. Nearly one quarter of those arrests corresponded to people who had already been convicted but were fleeing from justice.

In 2023, São Paulo was the Brazilian state with the highest number of violent deaths of LGBT+ people. Out of the 273 deaths reported that year, 27were registered in that state. Ceará ranked second, with 24 deaths. Further, most cause of these deaths were homicides.

Social, demographic, clinical, and criminal characteristics of the prison population of São Paulo state, Brazil (N = 1809).

The number of femicides — murders committed against women because of their gender — in Brazil slightly increased in 2023, in comparison to the previous year. Throughout 2023, 1,467 femicides were registered in Brazil, up from 1,455 recorded one year before. That year, the Brazilian state with the highest number of femicides was São Paulo.

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.

In 2023, the homicide rate in Brazil reached 22.8 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants. The lowest number in the country since 2012 was recorded in 2021, when a homicide rate of 22.3 was recorded.

The number of black and Pardo Brazilian people murdered in Brazil had been increasing throughout the years up until 2017. In 2022, around 35,500 black and Pardo citizens were killed in the South American country, down from almost 37,000 recorded one year before.

Considering the over 46,000 homicides registered in Brazil in 2022, almost 92 percent had men as victims. Meanwhile, approximately 3,810 women were killed in the South American country that year.

In 2023, 50 robberies of financial institutions were reported in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. It is followed by Espírito Santo with 25 cases registered, and by the state of Minas Gerais with 11 episodes.Overall, the number of robberies of financial institutions in Brazil has slightly increased lately.

This statistic shows the results of a survey carried out in August 2017 to find out the opinions of tourists visiting the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. As of August 2017, up to 76.8 percent of respondents stated they had not witnessed any crime or delinquent activity while visiting Rio de Janeiro.

In 2022, the state of Bahia reported the largest number of homicides in Brazil. That year, 6,776 homicides were recorded in this northeastern state. Bahia was followed by the state of Rio de Janeiro, with 3,762 murders reported. Despite that, the number of homicides in Brazil reached the lowest figure that year since at least 2006, totaling 40,464. Homicide targets Data shows that homicides affected men disproportionaly more than women in this South American country. Considering the over 46,340 homicides registered in Brazil in 2022, nearly 92 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 three 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 35,500 people of color were killed in Brazil, over three 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 6,350 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.

During a 2018 survey, approximately 45.3 percent of respondents in Brazil stated that street violence was the most frequent type of violence in the South American country. Moreover, 25.8 percent of the interviewees mentioned domestic violence against women and around 17.9 percent cited gang violence.Furthermore, it has been recently found that most of the Brazilian population is afraid of suffering violence from the police.

In 2023, it was estimated that approximately 1.4 per 100,000 Brazilian women were killed on account of their gender, around the same femicide rate recorded a year earlier. The number of femicides in Brazil has increased recently.