Working group drafts proposal to curb school violence in Brazil

Photo: Jamile Ferraris/MJSP

House lawmakers on Tuesday presented Justice Minister Flávio Dino with the final report of the working group on fighting school violence. The group was created in July, in the wake of a series of school violence episodes.

In April, a 25-year-old man killed four children aged 4 to 7 at a private daycare center in Blumenau, a city in the southern state of Santa Catarina. In late March, a 13-year-old student stabbed five people in a public school in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, killing a 71-year-old teacher.

More recently, in late October, in a different school in São Paulo, a 16-year-old student shot at three people, killing a 17-year-old girl.

The report, drafted by Congresswoman Luisa Canziani from the southern state of Paraná, includes four draft bills. One of them bans media outlets from identifying the perpetrators of so-called multiple victims incidents, such as mass shootings, with the aim of “avoiding the promotion” of the authors and “the emulation of their actions.” Currently, most mainstream outlets in Brazil have voluntarily adopted the practice of not identifying such perpetrators.

A second bill defines that public and private schools in Brazil’s most violent cities must have metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and plans for violence prevention. A third bill proposes increasing the budget for psychological and social assistance services.

Another bill expands the responsibilities of a recently authorized federal program, the National System for Monitoring and Combating Violence in Schools (Snave).

It also amends Brazil’s main legislation on the internet to demand that social media applications monitor and remove “illegal or potentially illegal content that characterizes or encourages violence or multiple victim incidents in schools.” They would be forced to offer a complaint channel connected to Snave.

A similar idea existed in the Fake News Bill (which has stalled in Congress). At the time, however, Snave was not yet enacted into law, so a similar complaint channel was vaguely defined.

As The Brazilian Report showed back in April, experts suggest that the rise in school attacks may be linked to online recruitment of young people by the far-right. Social media and online platforms are reportedly being used to co-opt young people and desensitize them to extremist ideologies.

Back in April, Mr. Dino said that “criminal networks strongly organize [on the internet] on the issue of violence against schools” to “recruit our youth for evil” and that Brazil is suffering an “epidemic” of school violence.