Lack of data affects crime monitoring in Brazil

Professionals in the field of Crime Studies in Brazil have always hotly debated the issue of crime data sources. This because, to the contrary of nations such as the United States and Canada, Brazil does not have a single federal agency responsible for collecting and organizing data so that citizens may not only analyze criminal behavior over time, but also, and especially, to evaluate the efficiency of criminal justice institutions according to the keystones of democracy and citizenship. To that end, organizations that are part of the system of information and statistics, as well as those that compose the criminal justice system ought to produce the following data (Fig 1):

 
Figure 1 – Information that ought to be produced by the institutions that belong to the system of statistics and criminal justice in Brazil.

As a result of this lack of information all analysis of criminality in Brazil is based solely on the number of crimes registered by police organizations, records fail to provide characteristics of those involved in any one of these events (crimes) and much less provide information on what if any developments followed from the data recorded.

It is important to note that since such records are seen as hardly reliable, there are a number of settings in which criminal studies chose to rely instead on death certificates issued “for external causes” (as óbitos por causas externas translates) data recorded by Brazil’s Ministry of Health that become, by proxy, the criminal data records for each state. 

In other words, in various states of the Brazilian federation the only crime-related measurement available is data related to the homicide rate. If we take the city of Belo Horizonte for example, the State capital of Minas Gerais, it is possible to note the discrepancy with respects to the number of homicides recorded in the Ministry of Health’s Mortality Information System, the data recorded in Military Police reports and data compiled in Civil Police reports (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Homicides as recorded by the different agencies

 
Key: Military Police in blue, Civil Police in pink, MIS in yellow, for the period of 1991 to 2003. (Absolute number of recorded homicides per year). Sources: PMMG- Minas Gerais Military Police, PCMG- Minas Gerais Civil Police and  DATASUS/SIM (MIS- Ministry of Health).

The data summarized in Figure 2 suggests a degree of agreement between the Civil Police data records and the Mortality Information System data, and a slight difference between the first two agencies and the Military Police force data. We must therefore consider a scenario in which every study conducted elects one of these sources of information, and aggravated by the lack of integration between different records, we are faced with disparate and conflicting results, despite the fact that there is but a single phenomenon being studied, in this case, homicide.

This setting, that is, the absence of a single and integrated data system on crimes reported and subsequent processes in the ambit of the criminal justice system, has detrimental implications for public policy.

Firstly, it is a problem because each state of the Brazilian federation records crimes in unique and diverse ways, making it impossible to carry out regional comparative studies.

Measuring the degree of impunity and insitutional performance

Secondly, since each institution records data in particular ways, it becomes impossible to compare institutional performance within the criminal justice system and further hinders evaluating the institutional processes that would follow each registered crime (cases closed, punishment dispensed, among other steps).

Thirdly, and in light of the problems previously mentioned, the absence of an integrated data system is also a hurdle for designing effective policy for crime prevention and the lowering of impunity.

  
Lets us illustrate the dramatic consequences at play with an example. Every year the United Nations issues a questionnaire for different countries for collecting information on criminal proceedings at all the different stages known as the UNCS, or the United Nations Crime Surveys. Such data is collected with the goal of measuring the variation between the number of cases registered by the police and the number of cases sentenced so as to evaluate the performance of the criminal justice institutions involved and the degree of impunity for each crime.
 

For lack of the necessary information, Latin American nations simply do not take part in the United Nations Crime Surveys, as pointed out in Figure 1. That is to say, friction rates (Figure 3) and consequently, rates of impunity in the criminal justice system remain unknown for nations in the region.

Figure 3 – Model for evaluating institutional performance within the criminal justice system, when an integrated data system is available.

Key: Y axis, (top to bottom): crimes occurred, crimes recorded by surveys, crimes recorded by the military police, inquiries opened by the civil police, inquiries closed by the civil police, complaints filed, proceedings started, proceedings completed, sentences begun, sentencing terms completed.

In nations that employ a longitudinal data base compiling statistical data produced by the various institutions of the criminal justice system, there is not only a probable knowledge of rates of friction, but real data (Figure 03/01). In countries where there is as yet no such system implemented, there is a general lack of knowledge of the phenomenon.

It is therefore not merely significant but there is an urgent need for Latin American countries to invest in collecting data concerning the main activities of the criminal justice system, it is the only way to assess actual levels of impunity in these nations, and therefore design the necessary policy for crime prevention and the improvement of the criminal justice system as a whole.

Ludmila Ribeiro has an undergradute and masters degree in Public Administration from the João Pinheiro Foundation, and Law from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Sociedade Brasileira de Instrução - SBI/IUPERJ, and visiting researcher at the Center for Latin America Studies - University of Florida and consultor of Brazil's Viva Rio NGO on Municipal Policy. 

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Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi