Recent data shows that Brazil recorded 40,824 homicides in 2022 — an average of 111 violent deaths per day. This is high, the equivalent of one out of every five homicides in the world occurring in Brazil. But it is also a 1 percent decrease from the previous year, and the lowest number in the historical series dating back to 2007.
At first glance, this seems to lend credence to far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro’s view on fighting crime. He advocated the indiscriminate use of firearms by the general population as a policy to curb violence. Criminals would “think twice” before robbing an “armed, law-abiding citizen,” he argued. Gun registrations increased by nearly 80 percent between 2019 and 2022, the duration of Mr. Bolsonaro’s term.
However, experts deny that the drop in homicides last year is linked to Mr. Bolsonaro’s pro-gun, tough-on-crime discourse.
Another important reason is the cooling off of the urban war between drug gangs that has raged in Brazil’s urban peripheries since the 1980s, particularly in the largest cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and which has been characterized by bloody disputes over territory and markets.
It is not that this urban conflict has ceased to exist. But it has become more “professionalized” and has migrated to more remote areas.
A geographical shift
Brazil’s overall homicide rate has been on the decline, albeit intermittently, since 2017. That year, the country experienced one of its worst...
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