After the initial excitement generated by the implementation of the Pacification Police Units (UPP) in some of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas that had previously been dominated by drug gangs, we are now beginning to consolidate the first lessons of an ongoing process of adjustments and improvements. Colonel Robson Rodrigues, UPP commander, confirms this.

Canada’s crime rate is the lowest it has been in over 40 years, according to a report issued by the government of Canada. To find out what the statistics in Canada mean and what can be learnt from them, Comunidade Segura sat down with criminology professor Anthony Doob from the University of Toronto to discuss the trends being seen in Canada and what they mean for other countries around the world.

It is not a question of increasing numbers of police officers on patrol, nor will it help to impose harsher sentencing or even to lower the age of criminal responsibility. If Latin America is to lower the levels of violence that afflicts the region, according to Amerigo Incalcaterra, Regional Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the solution lies with prioritizing citizen security over 'mano dura' type public security policies.

In 1999, the Vancouver City Health Authority determined that injection drug use was at the root of a healthcare crisis afflicting Vancouver's downtown eastside (DTE). The incidence of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, and drug overdoses had reached epidemic levels.  In order to get control of the situation, an addictions plan was put together which included a proposal for the opening of a supervised injection site. Today, the question is whether safe injection sites are lawful. The Canadian Supreme Court will rule on whether such sites are an expression of the Right to Security of the Person, or whether criminal law must close them.

After 21 years of Brazil's progressive child rights law, the head of Rio de Janeiro's Child, Youth and Senior Court Judge Ivone Ferreira Caetano believes it is mostly good on paper. She would like to see more action, and backs the current policy of mandatory custody at city shelters for crack using street children in Rio.

On August 3, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, legislation that would reduce the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, into law. The bill was  seen as an attempt to reduce racial disparities in U.S. prisons: According to the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 80 percent of U.S. prisoners for crack cocaine-related offenses are African Americans. Kara Gotsch, the director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project, was part of a coalition of activists who raised awareness on the sentencing disparities and helped bring the issue to the 2008 elections.

"Focus on the causes", was the overriding message to came out of the meeting on Violence Prevention in West Africa held in Abuja, Nigeria. Members of civil society organizations discussed next steps in the spirit of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development.

After a year in Portugal, political scientist Luciana Ballestrin compares the country's gun laws and efforts to disarm with those in Brazil in her doctoral thesis at UFMG. "In Brazil, the pressure comes from 'inside' and 'grassroots', while in Portugal, from 'outside' and 'top-down," she explains.

A group of Venezuelan researchers spoke in Rio de Janeiro during the "Dialogue on Urban Violence in Rio de Janeiro and Caracas" conference, organized by Fride and FLACSO on "Insecurity and Violence in Caracas". They said the country's institutional crisis was the main cause of increasing violence in the nation's capital.

"War is known to begin in the minds of men and women and so it is in the minds of these men and women that it needs to be tackled." With this belief, Professor Swaran Singh, chairperson of Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament (CIPOD) at the School of International Studies (SIS) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) has dedicated his academic career to teaching peace and conflict resolution studies.