Pernambuco counts its dead

The 2007 Map of Violence published in February by the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), showed Pernambuco to be the most violent state in Brazil. According to the Map data, in 2004 Pernambuco had a homicide rate of 50.7 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants. With a population of 8 million, the numbers average out to 11 murders per day, putting the state in first place in this catastrophic ranking.

However, even these alarming numbers might not be accurate. Since May 2007, the independent blog  PE Body Count has reported 1,203 homicides in the state, or  an approximate average of 12 deaths per day since the site began tracking numbers. “Though the violence rates are high, we are sure they are underreported. We need to show the real dimension of the pervasive violence here,” says Eduardo Machado, journalist and one of the creators of the blog.

Machado is part of a team of five journalists who update the state violence rates each day using information provided by a network of informants who challenge the statistics published by official sources.

The site is not linked to any news organization. Machado maintains the site is nonpartisan and nonprofit. The financial support it receives helps pay for operating expenses such as telephone and Internet, which are fundamental to the detailed fact checking of official sources.

The whole idea of creating a blog came from similar sites such as Rio Body Count which reports homicide rates in Rio de Janeiro and Iraq Body Count which reports the devastating statistics of the conflict in that country.

The Pernambuco team goes farther. As journalists, the creators of the blog not only report the information but also verify the facts and produce editorials on the state’s public security. “Only some of what comes from our sources checks out. Their information is a starting point to be checked and confirmed against the information coming from official sources,” says Machado.

The PE Body Count is not simply a blog of journalists who track homicides. The site partners with the Instituto Carlos Escobar, a civil society organization that urges more strategic planning as a way of lowering the violence rates in Pernambuco. The Iace catalyzed the public feeling and indignation about the violence rates. We demand better public policies and search for alternatives to the issue of security,” says Jose Carlos Escobar, president of the Institute. “We want to propose ideas instead of just complaining,” he says.

Although the program is serious and careful to check out the facts, similar initiatives have been a target of criticism by the government census bureau. But Machado is undeterred by criticism. ” Transparency has not been a strong point of either the past or the current governments. The blog makes online data available to those interested in accessing them,” he says.

Escobar emphasizes that the initiative supplies data more quickly than official newspapers and charts. “It is difficult to make this data available in real time which the PE Body Count manages to do.

“Despite some disagreements over the numbers we can now see that the figures supplied by the Secretary of Social Defense (SDS) have moved much closer to our numbers, says the president of Iace.

Although there has been some disagreement over numbers, the facts have shown that an organized civil society coupled with independent data production can have an enormous effect. According to Machado, the information available on the blog led to the firing of the SDS statistics manager.” The Secretary once published a death it attributed to a hit and run.  After checking the facts we discovered that the victim had been run over… by three gunshots,” says the journalist.

The blog is currently preparing a new way of producing reliable and independent content. The section “I was a victim”, will make the blog available to citizens so they can report situations of violence they have witnessed. “Figures are often underreported both because people don’t file complaints and the police move at a snail’s pace.  The blog is trying to prove that underreporting exists,” he says.

Translated by Cecília Piquet

From Comunidad Segura:

Public Security Diaries

Read Further:

PE Body Count (In Portuguese)

Mapa da violência 2007 (In PortuguesePDF)

Rio Body Count (In Portuguese)

Iraq Body Count