Government distorts graphs and facts to take advantage of drop in homicides

The federal government presented, on Wednesday (31), an assessment of the main public security data in Brazil in 2023. According to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP), the country had 40,429 homicides last year, the highest number low since the annual data began to be consolidated by the department in 2010.

At the event, the now former Minister of Justice Flávio Dino and other authorities attributed the current government’s actions to the drop in violence, without considering that there has been a tendency to reduce homicides since 2018, after the end of the first PT era in the Presidency of the Republic. , which ended in 2016. One of the causes suggested by Dino for the reduction in crime was the population disarmament policy.

“We have had the end of this era of trivializing access to weapons,” he stated, in reference to the measures taken by the government of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). “It is possible to create a panorama in which we have a reduction in irresponsible arms use and we do not have an increase in violent crime rates – on the contrary –, definitively breaking that supposed cause and effect relationship in which ‘more weapons, less crimes’. We show which is ‘fewer weapons, less crimes'”, added Dino.

When publishing the data on social media, the Ministry of Justice used a distorted graph of the historical series of the number of annual homicides between 2010 and 2023. See below how the graph published on the ministry’s networks suggests a much greater reduction in murders between 2022 and 2023 than the actual graph.

Graph with the real representation of the number of homicides in Brazil between 2010 and 2023. (Source: Ministry of Justice)

The 4.1% reduction from 2022 to 2023 is much smaller than what occurred from 2018 to 2019, when the decrease in homicides was 19.2%. Even so, in the government graph, the two falls are represented with similar dimensions. In the reliable graph, the drop from 2022 to 2023 is clearly much more discreet than the decrease that occurred from 2018 to 2019.

Jurist Fabricio Rebelo, coordinator of the Center for Research in Law and Security (Cepedes), classifies the image used by the PT administration on social media as a “graphic manipulation” that “grossly distorts its statistical representation”. “The representation already makes it quite clear that the government intends to use the indicators it now announces politically, trying not to emphasize the fact that the greatest historical reductions in the number of homicides were established under the previous government”, he states.

He also disputes the idea that disarmament policies have anything to do with reducing crime. “Disarmamentist rhetoric appears to be entirely ideological, unsupported by any remotely serious scientific data, so much so that any attempt to justify it ends up running into statistical juggling that would embarrass any even remotely respected researcher,” he says.

For Rebelo, an objective analysis of reality suggests the opposite of what Dino stated. “During the various phases of national weapons legislation, precisely those that were most permissive to citizens’ access to these defense instruments were those that corresponded to lower crime rates, with the opposite correlation being equally true,” he notes.

The expert also highlights that one of the minister’s own measures, requiring weapons to be re-registered with the Federal Police, ended up proving that legal equipment does not fall into the hands of criminals. Approximately 99% of the weapons were identified by those who owned them with the PF, which, for the expert, highlights “the absolute ideological daydream that the thesis that legal weapons supply criminals consists of.”

Maintaining the reduction in homicides needs to be approached with caution, says expert

Rebelo considers it risky to look for isolated facts to explain fluctuations in crime indicators. He assesses, however, that it is normal that the trend that began in 2018 does not break instantly with the change of government.

For the expert, several measures adopted since 2018, such as “policies and public stances to confront and intolerance of crime – breaking with the victimization of criminals”, in addition to the crackdown on drug trafficking and “incentives for citizens to defend themselves” – have ended weakening criminal organizations and “transmitting the public message of intolerance to crime”. These movements, according to him, are always established in trends, and what was experienced in 2023 could still be the result of these policies.

“The serious risk lies precisely in what lies ahead, with the reversal of this discourse and the adoption of policies of extrication, softening of sentences and impediment to self-defense. With this formula, this downward trend that has occurred in recent years will inevitably begin to reverse”, he warns.

The first year of government, in Rebelo’s view, “did not present a single guideline aimed at combating crime.” He assesses that the Justice department was “lost between investigations of political disaffection and persecution of legal gun owners, which brings absolutely no benefit to public security and, obviously, cannot be identified as determining any reduction”.

Finally, the expert recalls that the data from the Ministry of Justice are preliminary, collected from the states’ Public Security secretariats, and that the official numbers on homicides in Brazil will only be consolidated around October this year, by DataSUS, a system maintained by the Ministry of Health.