Elections 2024: what can mayors do for security? – 10/02/2024 – Daily life

On the eve of the 2024 municipal elections, public security is highlighted as the city’s main problem by residents of seven of the ten most populous capitals in Brazil, according to electoral surveys carried out by Quaest in August.

In this scenario, the topic gained centrality in the electoral debate, although the possibility of mayors and councilors acting in the fight against crime is limited by the powers that fall to municipalities, according to the Brazilian Constitution.

But what can mayors actually do for the safety of the population in cities?

And what examples can serve as inspiration for municipal mandates that begin on January 1, 2025?

Why security is top of mind

Public security and crime are at the top of voters’ concerns at a time when the country records a falling homicide rate since 2017 – the year in which the indicator broke a record amid the faction war, with the advance of the First Command of the Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV) for the North and Northeast regions.

For Melina Risso, research director at the Igarapé Institute, a public security study center, despite this apparent contradiction, it is necessary to consider that the population is subjected to different types of violence.

One example is cell phone theft, a crime that is very prevalent today in large cities.

Practically one in ten Brazilians (9.2%) had their cell phone stolen in the 12-month period between July 2023 and June this year, according to research by the Datafolha institute.

The incidence of crime is higher in capitals (15%) than in the interior (6%), according to the survey commissioned by the Brazilian Public Security Forum.

“It’s not just the homicide rate, but an experience of different types of violence that are very present in people’s lives”, says Risso, who is co-author of “Public Security to Change the Game” (Zahar, 2018). “This is a very important element in forming this perception [em relação à violência].”

The expert also highlights that crimes such as robbery are more frequent than official data shows, because many victims do not report them to the competent authorities.

For example, Datafolha research indicates that 14.7 million Brazilians had their cell phones stolen during the period studied, more than 14 times the number recorded in police reports.

“The data we see in official statistics is only a part of what really happens in people’s experience”, says Risso.

For Ricardo Balestreri, coordinator of the Social Urbanism and Public Security Center at Insper, there is an “intuitive” feeling among part of the population that, without public security, it is not possible to have the other rights of citizens respected.

“There is no full right to come and go for the majority of residents of popular territories constrained by crime, to undertake freely, to have access to education, to guarantee longevity for young people, to guarantee their parents that they will return home and find their children”, exemplifies Balestreri, who was National Secretary of Public Security (2008-2010) and of Public Security and Penitentiary Administration of Goiás (2017-2018).

“The population lives all of this in their daily lives, so public insecurity has the power to prohibit respect for other human rights, at a time when, unfortunately, a large part of the Brazilian population lives in dominated territories or with the presence of criminal activities.”

The Datafolha survey showed, for example, that 14% of Brazilians say they suffer from the presence of criminal factions or militias in their neighborhoods. In capitals, the percentage reaches 20%.

What is the responsibility of municipalities in public safety?

The Constitution establishes in Article 144 that public security is a “duty of the State” and “right and responsibility of all”.

However, in practice, the greatest responsibility for combating crime falls to the States, responsible for the Civil and Military police.

According to the constitutional text, the duties of the Union, States and municipalities in relation to public security are as follows:

• Unity: controls the Federal Police and the Federal Highway Police, being responsible for policing borders, federal highways and combating international and interstate drug trafficking;
• States and Federal District: they control the Civil and Military police, being responsible for overt policing (which includes maintaining public order, repressing crimes, ensuring individuals respect the law, among other measures) and investigating common crimes;
• Municipalities: They can develop violence prevention actions, for example, by installing lighting and cameras. And create municipal guards —historically, these garrisons were responsible for protecting property, but a recent decision by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) reinforced the role of guards in the safety of citizens.

“Today, when we look at the general sense of public security, it is very concentrated in the moment after the crime”, says Risso.

“In the police, in the criminal justice system, in the penitentiary system, which act after the situation of violence or crime has occurred.”

The expert notes, however, that the issue of public security is broader, also involving the causes of violence, which is related to social and individual vulnerability, the perception of law enforcement, among other factors.

“This is where the municipality has a huge role, ranging from urban planning, through policies that reduce the chance of people being victims of violence, through public policies such as investment in early childhood, the educational process”, lists Risso.

“There are different policies that create protective factors so that people are not exposed to situations of violence.”

She also mentions other interventions in urban areas, such as lighting, the movement of people determined by the city’s organization, in addition to the regulation of land and real estate issues (used by organized crime in areas where these groups operate through territorial control).

“It is necessary for municipalities to develop municipal security policies that go beyond municipal guards and are related to social urbanism practices”, says Balestreri, from Insper.

Social urbanism is an urban intervention and public policy strategy that aims at the local development of regions of high social vulnerability, based on intersectoral policies, built by public authorities, in partnership with civil society entities and the local population.

“It is necessary to create public facilities and opportunities for social inclusion for all people, to cut the problem of public insecurity at its root”, says the former secretary.

According to Balestreri, the problem of insecurity in Brazil is so serious because for decades the country has prioritized repression without paying due attention to inclusion, which is fundamental in such an unequal country, where there is an “army” of people without opportunities.

“It is a State that has absented itself from the lives of the poorest, in a country that inherited an ideology of big houses and slave quarters. We got rid of slavery, but not slavery, which is internalized in the culture of public management, with rare and honorable exceptions We have a country that manages for the big house and that contains the slave quarters.

Urbanism and security

When asked about successful examples of action by Brazilian municipalities in public security, the two experts cite the Community Peace Centers (Compaz) in Recife.

With the first unit opened in 2016, there are now five complexes in operation in the capital of Pernambuco, offering various services to the community, such as training courses, legal guidance, social assistance, as well as arts and sports classes.

The inspiration came from the public security strategy based on social urbanism in Medellín, Colombia, a city known for having gone from drug trafficking to an example of urban revitalization.

In Colombia’s second largest metropolis, the homicide rate, which was close to 200 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the mid-1990s, fell to less than 15 in 2023.

“We applied the Integrated Urban Project (PUI) of Medellín, seeking to implement the axes focused on early childhood, entrepreneurship, sport and leisure, civic coexistence, community policing, justice, rights, culture, education and preventive health”, said Murilo Cavalcanti, former Secretary of Citizen Security of Recife and formulator of Compaz, in a recent lecture.

In this same direction, of creating places for coexistence, leisure and concentration of services, Balestreri also mentions the Usinas de Paz do Pará (a state policy, with units in the Metropolitan Region of Belém, and in the southeast of the State); and, in São Paulo, the transformation of Unified Educational Centers (CEUs) into places where broader community services are provided.

In the work of the metropolitan guard, from the perspective of prevention, Risso gives the example of the Belo Horizonte Integrated Operations Center (COP-BH).

“The operations center does very interesting work to guide the guard’s action, looking at issues of coexistence in the city, which are not necessarily the focus of the police, such as, for example, the issue of cable theft, which has an impact immense in the life of cities, by affecting traffic lights and lighting”, explains Risso.

The expert also recalls that municipal guards from different cities have done important work to protect women victims of violence, through the so-called Maria da Penha Patrols — coordinated actions of teams that make routine visits to women who are under protective measures against aggressors .

Risso also cites the example of the Pacto Pelotas pela Paz, a violence prevention program that led to a 9% drop in homicides and a 7% drop in robberies in the city of Rio Grande do Sul, between August 2017 and December 2021, according to a study published in the magazine The Lancet Regional Health Americas.

A recent survey by Pelotas City Hall itself, carried out using another methodology, identified even more significant results, with drops in intentional lethal violent crimes (-60%), robberies on public transport (-75%), vehicle thefts (-91% ), vehicle thefts (-79%), pedestrian robberies (-82%) and robberies from commercial establishments (-78%), between 2017 and 2024.

The project mixes urban planning, policing and education initiatives, with a strong role in the resocialization of inmates.

“When working with public security, there is no ‘silver bullet’. It is necessary to work with a set of measures, with great clarity on where the municipality can act”, says Risso.

“What we have seen in these elections are many candidates proposing actions that are not within the municipality’s competence.”