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ARTICLE
Public safety should be treated seriously
It is rarely possible to identify any public security policy or even any political manifestation truly inspired by serious research in the area. It’s easier to follow common sense and repeat nonsense
Published on October 21, 2024 at 05:00
A bus was set on fire in Bairro da Paz. The local population has been without public transport for a few days. Real and impactful facts like this have the power to reinforce the feeling of insecurity that finds foundations in everyday life, although it is largely heightened by sensationalist speeches. But the fact is that as long as it is considered reasonable to be afraid of being anywhere, we will have a serious problem.
There are several structural reasons why there is more insecurity in Brazil than in other countries. Historical causes, such as the prolonged period of slavery and the lack of agrarian reform; social causes, such as inequality and the deficit between expectations and possibilities of acquiring material and immaterial goods; cultural causes, such as machismo, racism, homophobia, the cult of violence and deep-rooted consumerism that make lives and bodies disposable, authorizing attacks against them.
Perhaps, however, the biggest reason is the difficulty of freeing oneself from easy, shallow and false speeches when the topic is debated. It is rarely possible to identify any public security policy or even any political manifestation truly inspired by serious research in the area. It’s easier to follow common sense and repeat nonsense.
The standard is to present yourself as a brave person, willing to be tough, inflexible (violent) against crime. A fight against bad people, different from us, is announced. Expressions such as “world of crime” and “world of drugs” are created, as if we were denouncing a foreign people who invaded us. Finally, suffice it to say that there is a lack of someone manly enough to face the monsters.
Right-wing and left-wing governments have been repeating the same speeches and presenting the same solutions for as long as the world has been around. I challenge anyone who can demonstrate with data that one proposes milder or stricter laws than the other when in power. Blindness in matters of public security has no party. Everyone has acted in the same way, including opportunism to criticize opponents or propose harmless laws, at the expense of the lives of poor people.
The history of our criminal law is the history of increasing penalties, creating more severe regimes and labeling more crimes as heinous. Our criminal process is one of the least guaranteed in South America. Do you know when one of these practices managed to reduce crime in Brazil? Never. The population is being deceived by proposing new crimes, higher penalties and criminal proceedings in which, increasingly, the accused is punished before they can even defend themselves.
An example of a scapegoat is custody hearings, an institute that simply requires that someone arrested before trial be presented in person to a judge, so that he can assess whether the arrest was carried out legally and whether that person should remain in prison before the end. of the process and whether there are signs of torture. It is said that “the security problem is that custody hearings release many people accused of very serious crimes”, “criminals are often released and arrested again the next day”. Speech as easy as it is demonstrably false.
The Public Defender’s Office of Bahia has just published extensive research, which analyzed 36,680 custody hearings over 8 years. In every 10 cases, only 6 people are released. If the rule in any civilized country is for the accused to be presumed innocent and to be able to defend themselves in freedom, we are at the minimum limit. In 2023, only 4% of arrests were made by someone who had already been arrested in the same year. More shocking crimes such as sexual crimes, homicides and robberies do not reach 2% of custody hearings and rarely fail to have provisional arrests maintained. Not even 1/5 of arrests refer to crimes involving the use of a firearm.
The research also points to at least one probable cause for the feeling of insecurity that is easier to deal with than the structural ones listed at the beginning of the text: Less than 10% of arrests were made by the Civil Police. This means that we have investigated, prevented and planned little. As with any activity, when acting this way, the chance of errors is greater.
Is anyone interested in reading the research? What gives more publicity, improving the ability to uncover and produce adequate evidence or simply proposing a law promising increased penalties? Populist criminal laws and fallacious speeches that promise magical solutions do nothing to improve security. They only get in the way, because they blind and impede the search for effective solutions. Everyone directs their efforts to fight the shadows and forgets about the concrete work.
Leaders from the progressive and conservative camps are locked in an irresponsible dispute over who can sell themselves as more capable of taking measures that all experts know don’t work and creating scapegoats. Worse, they contaminate those who should be technicians and exercise control. Many people have had their lives destroyed because they are victims of crimes, victims of unfair convictions, victims of disproportionate sentences, victims of anticipation of guilt and victims of executions because of this frivolous attitude. We needed an honesty pact. Public Security should be treated more seriously.
Rafson Ximenes is a public defender
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