More than 10% of murders are not counted by the Secretary of Public Safety

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More than 400 homicides which took place over a period of five years did not enter the statistics of the Secretary of Public Safety of the state of Paraná (SESP). Those cases involve victims who died after being shot, assaulted, stabbed or burnt, according to reports of the System of Mortality Control (SIM) of the Ministry of Health. According the SESP, 3.214 violent deaths took place between 2007 and 2011. The SIM reported 3.626 cases.

One of the reasons is the different methodology used by the SESP which takes into account the number of police inquiries set up during this determined period of time, and not exactly the number of deaths. As Gazeta do Povo reporters showed in the Crime without punishment series, Civil Police takes three months on average to set up an inquiry. In some cases, it took more than two years to set up the inquiry.

Therefore, the number of police inquiries does not exactly correspond to the number of homicides that took place over this time lapse.

This could also be explained by the fact that victims of assault are classified as armed assault victims and not as victims of homicides. Yet, there are a large number of homicides which are not properly investigated as they are not correctly recorded.

Using the number of inquiries of intentional crime, the SESP does not always record a smaller number of occurrences. En 2011, for example, the State government registered 685 violent deaths while the SIM counted 632. This same year, the Civil Police established a unit called Unsolved Homicides (Honre), whose objective is to investigate cases which remained unsolved since 2009.

According to police chief Rubens Recalcatti, head of the Homicide Unit at the time, several inquiries of cases that occurred the previous years were set up during his time at the head of the unit. Brazilian police authorities usually contest the statistics of the Ministry which are considered the most complete and accurate, despite showing some errors, says Daniel Cerqueira, researcher at the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA).

According to Cerqueira, the lack of accurate statistics is an assault on civil rights. "The victims’ relatives have the right to know the motive of the death of their relatives and this has to be done the State," he believes.

Moreover, statistics are crucial so as to establish public policies and prevent new deaths. "Public safety management based on improvisation and without accurate indicators is the same as a doctor willing to cure a patient without thermometer and other equipment to identify the disease of his patient. In this particular case, the treatment and the remedies may be inefficient, inadequate and may even kill the patient," he says.

Police authorities tend to fear the publication of accurate crime statistics, explains Luís Flávio Sapori, sociologist and coordinator of the Study Center in Public Safety of the Pontifical University of Minas Gerais. "Statistics are used for public planning. It is a tool for transparency but it is treated as a state secret. Decision makers in public safety have a lot to improve here,’ he claims. According to him, a university or whatever public research institute should be in charge of crime statistics.

Paraná had 2,400 occulted crimes in 15 years

Over a period of fifteen years, 2,368 homicides committed in the State of Paraná remained "occulted" and did not enter national statistics. These deaths resulted from homicides but due to registering failures, they were mistakenly classified as "violent deaths caused by undetermined origins" in the System of Mortality Control (SIM). They represent up to 6.3% of the 37,800 homicides recorded between 1996 and 2010.

These conclusions are part of a study entitled "Mapping Occulted Homicides in Brazil" from the Institute of Applied Economic Research. According to the study, 8,600 homicides committed in Brazil every year were occulted and never were taken into account by the SIM over this time lapse. Therefore, the number of homicides in Brazil is 18.3% higher than what the official statistics have shown over this period of fifteen years.

These figures were calculated based on more than one million deaths. Findings have shown that some states have witnessed improvements while others saw their rate rise. In the state of Paraná, taking into account the number of occulted homicides, the homicide rate for 100,000 inhabitants would rise from 32.9 to 34.2 based on the figures of 2007 to 2010.

ImprovementsResearcher Daniel Cerqueira, author of the study, points out at the SIM as being "the only source of information on violence in Brazil using reliable methodology, transparency and the same criteria for each state since 1979." However, Cerqueira points out that a better articulation between the institutions working with this type of information is needed.

The Ministry of Health, in charge of the System, claims that it has invested in recruiting professionals working at the state level as well as improved the data collection and analysis.

Curitiba recorded more homicides than France

Although crime statistics may be questionable, official figures of homicides remain very high in Brazil. France for instance, which has a population of around 65 million people, records less cases than the city of Curitiba, which has a population of 1.8 million. In 2011, only 665 homicides were recorded in France, while Curitiba had 685.

Another key difference between Brazil and the rest is the crime resolution rate. It reaches up to 80% in France, according to the Ministry of Interior. It is of only 20% in Curitiba. Data is collected by the French and published by the National Observatory of Criminality and Penal Answers, an independent public institute, administrated by representatives of civil society, member of parliament, researchers and professors.

Following a homicide, French police officers have to inform a Prosecutor from the Public Prosecutor Office who will determine if the crime requires investigation. He will therefore lead the police who will be assigned to carry out the investigation. They have to take witness statements, obtain warrants and collect material evidence which is later analyzed by National Police experts. In the meantime, a judicial inquiry is set up by the judge.