An analysis of homicides in Recife, Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, since 2000, approximately 50,000 people are murdered every year. In a span of 30 years (1980 – 2010), more than 1 million homicides were registered. In 2012, the homicide rate in Brazil was 29 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. All Brazilian states exceed the threshold of epidemic established by World Health Organization. In this context, the present study has the objective of to investigate homicides in Recife, taking into account temporal, spatial, environmental, and multicriteria analysis. The temporal analysis shows that the difference of homicides between seasons and months is not statistically significant. However, there is a significant increase in homicides during the weekends (42 percent of all homicides) and evenings (62 percent). Moreover, the spatial results show that the spatial patterns are different within the temporal dimensions in many cases. The findings from spatial analysis reveal that homicides are very concentrated in the city of Recife and in a time span of five years (20092013) all the homicides occurred in less than 10 percent of the street segments. In addition, our test showed that the spatial pattern was not stable over the years. However, when we consider the temporal dimensions (as suggested by temporal analysis), the patterns were stable along the years – except for weekdays and night/dawn. Furthermore, through the environmental analysis, we found that inequality, rented houses, and number of residents have a positive relationship with homicide. On the other hand, income, education, public illumination, population density, and street network density have a negative relationship. The findings of these analyses indicate that homicide in Recife can be understood by the perspective of social disorganization theory and routine activity theory. Finally, multicriteria approach was applied to highlight vulnerable areas to homicide in Recife. We considered six variables to evaluate vulnerability and the areas were identified by PROMETHEE II method and local Moran’s I. Other application was made in Boa Viagem neighborhood, so we were able to perform a more detailed analysis. Three different approaches were tested for Boa Viagem and we suggested some actions in order to reduce criminality in long term.