Belo Horizonte crime maps

The population of Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, has just received a tool to map crime in the city. Launched at the end of 2009, the Virtual Program of Homicide Maps of the State Office for Social Defense (SEDS) (Programa Virtual de Georreferenciamento de Homicídios da Secretaria de Estado da Defesa Social) allows the public to access the complete statistics on where the murders took place in the state capital. The crime data has been made available in tables identified by neighborhood and by street, and the stats provide data according to the month the crime was committed, as well as the age and gender of the victims.

The map is generated based on police report filed by the Crimes against Life division of the Civil Police force, the Divisão de Crimes Contra a Vida (DCCV) and compiled by the Integrated Social Defense Information Center, CINDS (Centro Integrado de Informações de Defesa Social). The data is divulged 30 days after the police investigation is closed so that the information is certified.

The Social Defense Secretary Maurício Campos Júnior announced that the homicide crime maps are available, and that the police forces and the SEDS already use it to plan their actions, helping to allocate police officers in specific locations and times, or managing priority investigations. “On finding that certain areas concentrated homicides, I was able to take a number of actions,” said Campos Júnior.

Campos Júnior stated that when violent crime clusters in certain areas it means that public policies must be implemented that must go further than simple suppression, such as specially trained repressive interventions and crime prevention programs. According to Campos Júnior, the main homicide victims in Belo Horizonte are young males age 14 to 24.

Campos Júnior adds that divulging the map also means allowing issues to surface about the areas where the homicides take place. “On shedding light on these places there will be greater public and popular pressure on our corporations, because there won’t be a single police chief or police commander who will not react to a publicly available homicide map of his area of responsibility,” said Campos Júnior.

On the other hand, the secretary believes that the actions of other public entities and civil society will also look at the areas most affected by violent crime. “We hope that by launching the map the communities themselves will take action. The associations, the community leaders the municipalities and the civil society organizations will all find it easier to act once data is made transparent, such as the ones we are making public now,” said Campos Júnior.

Stigma

However researchers called attention to the possibility that the homicide map contribute to further stigmatize certain areas of the city. Secretary Campos Júnior (photo) understands the issue is controversial. “People are not unanimous about it, even among sociologists and criminologists, there are diverging stances. There are those who think that by publishing this type of data you help to stigmatize certain areas,” said Campos Júnior.

For Rodrigo Fernandes, a sociologist and researcher at the Center for the Study of Criminality and Public Security (Crisp) however, the publicity surrounding the homicide map is positive. In his view, by offering data on homicides to the public the government is making itself accountable to the public, showing them the real facts.

As to the risk of added stigma on the areas most affected by violent rime, he believes it is a lesser risk in face of the benefits that may arise from making the data available. “Crimes in the city of Belo Horizonte happen always in the same places and same times. It is common sense that the community, especially those who live in the affected areas, it isn’t news to them,” said Fernandes. “If we monitor this data the population will be able to demand from their representatives that they bring appropriate policies for the affected areas,” he added.

Another point raised by researchers is that releasing the data to the population could contribute to raising the feeling of insecurity among the population, a conjecture that the secretary disavows. According to Campos Júnior, in 2009 the perception of insecurity in the capital reached its lowest point in the last few years, having dropped by 14% with respect to previous years. He adds that indicators show that homicide rates have dropped but that the apperceived insecurity lagged a little behind the real data. “In 2009 we noticed that the perceived insecurity among residents of Belo Horizonte improved,” he said.

In his view publishing crime data will help citizens feel safer. “To release a crime map such as this one is to make data more transparent, and it becomes an invitation for our partners to face the reality of the social phenomena,” he said.

Visitors

Since the homicide data was released, SEDS registered 5,609 visits to the site (as of the second week of January) and visitors came from as many as 24 countries. On the other hand however, there are still no concrete results as far as policies from public authorities or from civil societies in response to the data released. In the Secretary’s view, the homicide map began an important debate on the topic of criminality, which is in itself already an important victory. “The map has, in 30 days, generated a lot of debate and this is good news. A number of people and experts have expressed their opinions and this has been a very positive experience,”

The Office of Social Defense will update the map in its 3rd month. At that point it will analyze whether releasing the map will have contributed to lowering the homicide rate, whether it has influenced crime rates in any way. According to Campos Júnior, it will be an important tool to measure the efficiency of releasing data to the public.

The Office of Social Defense hopes to expand the map to cover all of metropolitan Belo Horizonte. It is also going to study the use of the program in other areas. There are areas of the city where the homicide rates are so low that it does not warrant compiling such a detailed map. “At this point the map seems to be very useful in the city of Belo Horizonte and it seems that it will be useful in the greater metropolitan area,” said Campos Júnior.

According to the data on the crime map, most homicides take place in border areas between each municipality, the so called micro-regions. These localities may benefit more from the information released by the SEDS. According to Campos Júnior, if the homicides are more prevalent at the edges of the municipalities it is a sign that public services especially those related to urban logistics are not being delivered to those areas. He further explains that these are areas with limited access to public transportation, and less services such as health care centers, and schools. “These areas are in a limbo, public policies do not get there,” he said.

In his view, to rely exclusively on police work, which at times is the only service to arrive in these areas, is not enough to revert criminality in the area. Police work must be associated to other kinds of intervention. An example of this is the drop in the homicide rate of micro-regions in 28% over the last trimester. In his view the map was not the only factor involved in this drop, but it may have played a part. “You make the map known, locate the homicides, establish a police strategy and generate a climate of pressure,” he said.

“The idea is to generate discomfort. People hope that this will change once the data becomes transparent,” said Campos Junior, commenting on the intention of the program divulged by the SEDS, its goal is to lower the homicide rate in Belo Horizonte and in the border areas between the municipalities and the state capital.

Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi

Read Further:

Programa Virtual de Georreferenciamento de Homicídios da Secretaria de Estado da Defesa Social (In Portuguese)