Left does theoretical gymnastics to minimize drop in homicides

The same left that, in other contexts, claims to staunchly defend science can sometimes resort to theoretical speculations that do not lose much to flat earthism in terms of escaping common sense. This is what has happened, in recent years, in the justifications that some opinion makers present for the consistent drop in homicides registered in Brazil in the two governments that succeeded the first PT era – administrations of former presidents Michel Temer (MDB) and Jair Bolsonaro (PL). The denial of reality took place again this Wednesday (1st), with the finding of a new drop in these indices.

Murders dropped by 30.9% between 2017 and 2022, according to data released on Wednesday by the Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP). In 2022, the country recorded a total of 40,824 homicides, the lowest number in the historical series of the FBSP, which publishes data since 2007.

The downward trend in homicides from 2018 – the second year after the PT left the country’s presidency – is strong. Between 2007 and 2017, the growth in murders was consistent.

In 2007, the first year of Lula’s second term, there were 44,625 homicides. In 2016, the last year of the Dilma Rousseff (PT) government, 57,842 homicides were registered in the country, 13,200 more than nine years earlier.

Since 2018, on the contrary, there has been a downward trend in murders, which began during the Temer administration, when there were 51,558 homicides in the country. In 2019, already under the Bolsonaro government, the index dropped to 41,730, followed by an increase in 2020 to 44,061 and two subsequent drops.

Even so, when listing hypotheses to explain the numbers, left-leaning opinion makers and media avoid considering a possibility that, in any honest analysis, would at least be considered as plausible: that leftist governments seriously failed in the strategies to combat violence.

In the list of theses that the left has used to explain the phenomenon, there are theories such as “the professionalization of organized crime” and the “non-aggression pact between factions”. “The reduction of homicides in Brazil is the thermometer of a more balanced criminal market”, said an expert with this bias.

However, the reduction that occurred from 2018 was drastic, and it is to be assumed that, if these hypotheses were correct, the transformation would be gradual, not sudden. In addition, until 2017, the rates of violence only increased, which should raise doubts about why organized crime only decided to become professional after 2018.

The prosecutor Bruno Carpes, member of the Center for Research and Analysis of Crime at the School of Advanced Studies in Criminal Sciences and author of the book “The Myth of Mass Incarceration”, says that “theses regarding the ‘professionalization of crime’ or of the ‘non-aggression pact’ do not hold up when the general drop in criminality is often analysed”. “There was a reduction in crimes such as robbery, robbery and rape in all regions of the country. It is enough to follow the news to notice that disputes between factions in different regions of the country continue. Consequently, such theses are shown to be extremely fragile from a scientific and empirical point of view, relying only on the confirmation bias of some specialists to justify their paradigms regarding the causes of crime”, says the specialist. “Such statements are astonishing, especially when the facts and numerous empirical studies show the failure of such arguments, making them unscientific”, he adds.

Jurist Fabricio Rebelo, coordinator of the Center for Research in Law and Security (Cepedes), says that the hypotheses mentioned “are not at all plausible”. who succeeded the PT in the fight against crime. How PTism put into practice the leftist criminal victimization booklet, treating him at a higher level than the society itself that was a victim of him, and the results were terrible, including successive records in homicides, simply do not accept that the reversal of these banditry policies has produced positive effects. Hence these inventions that the reduction of crimes would be an option of criminals themselves, something completely outside the reality of public security and only defensible by those who do not understand the subject at all or even You have no idea how organizations are structured in their dispute over territory. It is astonishing that you have are so preposterous that they can be treated seriously in some segments ”, he criticizes.

In addition to far-fetched hypotheses, media with a leftist bias sought alternative ways of framing reality to report the fact. One of them was to highlight the fact that, in the last quarter of 2022, there was an increase in homicides compared to the previous quarter. “Cycle of reduction of violence in Brazil loses strength”, said one vehicle.

An expert interviewed by a journalist took advantage of the negative figure for the final quarter of 2022 to attack the loosening of disarmament policies for the population: “That downward trend in homicides that we had been seeing in recent years, especially from the last quarter of 2018, has been reversed. The great easing that occurred in federal regulations for the acquisition and maintenance of weapons and ammunition, and this lack of control of public policy, may be starting to take its toll from now on”, he said.

A left-leaning milieu preferred to place emphasis on the absolute number and leave out comparisons with previous years or quarters. “Brazil exceeds 40,000 violent deaths in 2022,” he reported.

Important factors are ignored as hypotheses for reducing homicides by the left

Bruno Carpes explains that the drop in homicides can be due to several factors. One of the main ones has been ignored by the left: the adoption of public policies that seek to combat impunity.

“After more than 30 years of rise in the number of homicides in Brazil – in a scenario of what can be called ‘structural impunity’ –, numerous state actions, both by the Union and the states, can explain the key turn in the upward trend,” he says. As an example, the expert cites the displacement of leaders of criminal organizations to federal penitentiaries, the significant increase in drug seizures, the increase in the confiscation of assets by criminal organizations, the federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro, the improvement in the control of penal establishments and the large inter-institutional operations launched by the National Group to Combat Criminal Organizations (GNCOC).

In addition, Carpes highlights the “mobilization of police forces, which were increasingly demotivated and without support from the political class”. He also mentions the “Em Frente Brasil” program, launched in 2019 by the then Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro. The project started in five cities, had relevant results, with a drop in violence rates on several fronts, and was replicated in other municipalities.

“Obviously, other factors cannot be ruled out, but, in the foreground, the new state actions seem to be the driving force for the reduction”, says Carpes.

For Rebelo, the “policies that are less conniving with systemic criminality, focusing on isolating the leaders of large organizations and the work of suffocating their supply”, with large seizures of weapons and drugs, were decisive for the drop in homicides. “Without the direct command of their leaders and with less military and economic power, the performance of these organizations was reduced”, he points out.

Specialists are more cautious, however, with the theory proclaimed by the right that facilitating access to legal weapons would have been the most determining reason for the drop in homicide rates. For Carpes, this is a discussion “much more connected with the right of defense” and that has little to do with public safety.

On the one hand, says the prosecutor, research has already shown “innumerable times” that “greater access to legal weapons does not demonstrate an increase in the number of violent crimes”. “Increased access to legal weapons does not have negative effects on macro-criminality”, assures the expert, noting that there are even North American studies that demonstrate the opposite: carrying a legal weapon can inhibit violent crimes by habitual criminals. On the other hand, according to him, it would be hasty to conclude that the increase in the number of legal weapons considerably favors the decline of macrocriminality.

Rebelo agrees. “The association between access to weapons and public safety needs to be done very carefully, so as not to fall into the rhetorical trap that allowing such access is a public safety policy. It is not. It is about guaranteeing the personal security of the individual, precisely when the public security apparatus has already failed and he only has himself to defend himself, ”he points out.

The most important thing in the discussion of the effect of legal guns on public safety, in his view, is “the total deconstruction of the leftist theory that allowing legal access to guns always implies an increase in homicides”. “We had a consolidated movement in the opposite direction in recent years, with records in the sale of weapons and in the drop in lethal crimes. This results in disarmament desperation to seek outlandish explanations against reality”, concludes Rebelo.