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Sao Paolo murder rate drops below Cleveland’s

The murder rate in the world’s third-biggest metropolis—a caldron of vice and poverty—is dropping sharply and mirroring a trend witnessed in New York City in the 1990s.
/ Source: Reuters

The murder rate in the world’s third-biggest metropolis — a caldron of vice and poverty — is dropping sharply and mirroring a trend witnessed in New York City in the 1990s.

It has plunged 54 percent in the last seven years in greater Sao Paulo to about 23 for every 100,000 residents and fell further in the first three months of this year, official data show.

Sao Paulo is now slightly less deadly than Cleveland and a bit more dangerous than Philadelphia.

Globally, crime researchers have linked drops in murder to everything from higher literacy rates to the legalization of abortion.

In Sao Paulo, tougher policing appears to be the main factor making the city less deadly, along with the arrival of government services in once neglected slum neighborhoods.

The number of solved homicide cases has tripled with more funds for police, putting killers, especially professional hit men, behind bars and helping curtail a long tradition of vigilante justice in poor neighborhoods.

Sao Paulo state’s prison population rose 69 percent in the last seven years.

The plunging murder rate has been most closely linked to a 40 percent drop in the number of guns seized by street cops.

“My best explanation is fewer people carrying guns,” said Tulio Kahn, a former United Nations crime researcher now in charge of all police for the city and state of Sao Paulo.

Stopping and frisking
Gun use has apparently fallen on more stopping-and-frisking by police, a 1997 law that stiffened penalties for carrying concealed weapons, and anti-violence campaigns.

Sao Paulo is losing population and conditions in slums formed three decades ago have improved with the building of police stations, churches, courts, and schools and improving incomes for residents.

“Slums on the periphery have matured and people have developed an awareness of the costs of vigilante justice,” said Bruno Paes Manso, author of a book about Sao Paulo hit men.

Despite declines in the murder rate and gun seizures, voters still feel insecure. In October they rejected a bill to ban guns, fearing it would have taken protection away from law-abiding citizens and left only criminals armed.

With deeper data analysis, researchers have also debunked dry laws, which politicians have touted for cutting crime.

Dry laws prevent bars from staying open all night so drunken brawls do not turn lethal. They were first enacted in 2000 in Diadema, a tough Sao Paulo suburb, where the mayor observed that most murders happened near bars.

But since then, the murder rate has fallen just as fast in cities without dry laws, as in Diadema. In hindsight, researchers say, there are dozens of bars per square kilometer in poor neighborhoods, so many that most of life’s daily events happen near a bar—not just homicides.

Rio de Janeiro — the seaside tourist mecca that Sao Paulo residents frequently criticize as a political mess where drug gangs compete for power — is twice as deadly as Sao Paulo.

Sao Paulo’s murder rate is three times higher than New York City’s seven. Still, the murder rate is expected to keep falling even as street brawls rise.

“Society isn’t becoming less violent, but the violence is less lethal because people don’t have guns,” Kahn said.