Police lethality increases almost 190% in a decade, says Security Yearbook

The number of deaths caused by police intervention in Brazil has grown by 188.9% in a decade, according to data from the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook released this Thursday (18).

Last year, there were 6,393 cases resulting from the lethality of state agents – on average, 4 of these 5 people were black or brown.

This means that the chances of a black person dying in a police intervention are 3.8 times higher than that of a white person, according to the study.

There is also a predominance of gender – 99.3% are male – and age group, with 71.7% of victims between 12 and 29 years old.

Likewise, of the 127 police officers murdered in 2023, 69.7% were black, 96% were male, and more than half (51.5%) were between the ages of 35 and 49. The good news is that the loss of state agents last year fell by 18.1%, but there was a 26.2% increase in cases of police suicides, with 118 records.

In the breakdown by state, Amapá recorded 173 deaths due to police intervention, but as it is a small population, the highest rate per 100,000 inhabitants was reached last year, with 23.6 cases.

Next comes Bahia, with 12 deaths due to police intervention per 100,000 inhabitants (1,699 cases in absolute numbers), and São Paulo, with 229 deaths and a rate of 10.4 per 100,000 residents of São Paulo.

For the first time, researchers from the Brazilian Public Security Forum have highlighted the proportion of police lethality in the total number of intentional violent deaths (MVIs) in Brazilian municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. This makes it possible to compare whether more people die as a result of crime or in cases of police intervention.

When taking into account the ranking of the 10 cities with the highest police lethality, we notice quite different proportions and cases in which state agents are responsible for more than half of the MVIs.

This is the case of the city in first place, Jequié (BA), with 55.2% of deaths caused by police intervention. In second place, Angra dos Reis (RJ), the proportion is even higher, 63.4%.

The only capital on the list, Macapá (AP), records 4 out of every 10 murders in the city occurring during police intervention. In two municipalities in Sergipe, Itabaiana and Lagarto, the proportion also exceeds half, with 63% and 54.3%, respectively.

For Renato Sérgio de Lima and Samira Bueno, CEO and executive director of the Brazilian Public Security Forum, police lethality is a relevant component for understanding the phenomenon of violence in Brazil.

This is because the territorial dispute between criminal factions appears as a “great explanatory variable for the trend of Intentional Violent Deaths in the country”, but, “if taken in isolation, it has the ability to cloud the debate on the effectiveness of public security policies as a social right”.

When analyzing the period between 2017 and 2023, the total number of MVIs fell by 27.7%, but deaths resulting from police intervention rose by 23.4%.

“In other words, while the country has managed to reduce the total volume of records of intentional violent deaths, the participation of police lethality in the composition of such records has increased sharply,” write Lima and Bueno.

“It is necessary to advance the discussion on how to repress the military, territorial and financial power of organized crime in a more efficient and effective way than the encouragement/liberality of police lethality by some governments, whether they are right, center or left on the political and ideological spectrum.”