Public Safety and Brazil's Dilemma Heading into the 2022 Elections by Fabio Sá e Silva - 02/11/22

In 2018, when Jair Bolsonaro was elected Brazil’s president, urban violence was rightfully at the center of the country’s political agenda. Statistics of homicides and violent crimes, such as robberies and rapes, had been on the rise continuously, unaffected––contrary to what many had expected––by the success of key social and economic policies adopted during the presidential administrations of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Dilma Rousseff that, among other results, had ended hyperinflation, universalized basic education, created jobs, and drastically reduced poverty and hunger.

The intractability of crime proved a boon to Bolsonaro’s candidacy. His life-long approach to public safety had been to offer simplistic solutions to a complex problem. Relaxing gun control legislation to enable “self-defense” by “good citizens” and removing obstacles for the police to “crack down” on crime––among which was the protection of basic rights of the criminally accused––had always been at the tip of his tongue. As the specter of crime made the electorate fearful and distressed, his demagoguery could finally sit well and generate political dividends.

Data clearly points to a subset motivated by his stances on crime and violence, especially––but not exclusively––among men.  In studies conducted between 2016 and 2018, Kalil (2018) mapped nine ideal types of Bolsonaro voters, four of which were clustered around the repudiation of crime or violence. In his analyses of “Brazil’s right-wing turn”, Nicolau notices that the preferences in the 2018 elections were highly asymmetric along gender lines, with Bolsonaro amassing 64% of votes among males. His explanation is that Bolsonaro’s “favorite themes (the relaxation of gun control, the use of tough policies against organized crime, and the critique to human rights policies) have greater resonance among males” (2020, p. 54; see also Kalil 2021).

Four years later, crime and violence may not have the same political salience they did in 2018.This is not because Bolsonaro solved the problem but because the damage he caused to Brazil’s economic and social fabric is so deep that many Brazilians now fear dying not from a stray bullet but from hunger or from COVID-19.

But crime has hardly become irrelevant to Brazilian life. Like in most other areas of policy under Bolsonaro, the problems in public safety persisted and deepened. Crime statistics saw improvement in 2018 and 2019, some of which, nonetheless, may be just statistical illusion.  Experts notice that deaths for undetermined violent causes (MCVI in the Portuguese acronym), not officially recorded as homicides, have increased significantly (Cerqueira et al 2021 and Graph 1), as have deaths in the context of police actions (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2021 and Graph 2). 

Yet numbers alone do not convey the true damage Bolsonaro has done to public safety. This cuts more deeply, eroding the sector’s already fragile institutional fabric. Curiously enough, this did not happen through formal policy change. Bolsonaro’s main legislative venture in public safety––an anticrime package––was largely rejected by Congress, and he was unable to pass any other major piece of legislation. But combining abusive Executive Orders and direct, populist appeals, he managed to accomplish three things:

• Dehumanize “criminals” and legitimize police brutality in a country that massively incarcerates young, black/brown, and poor people;

• Increase access to firearms among Brazilians at an unprecedented rate, and;

• Radicalize and co-opt a significant number of Brazilian police officers to his political base.

It does not take much imagination to envision the potentially explosive results from this combination if Bolsonaro is given a second term in the 2022 elections––or even if he loses the vote count. But maybe a recollection of the January 6th events in the United States could give readers a hint.

Although Bolsonaro may currently not look very competitive, his approach to public safety may still appear on the ballot box, albeit in different ways. The most visible variable is Sergio Moro, the former judge who, in his own words, “commanded” the Lava Jato (Car Wash) anticorruption operation. Moro joined Bolsonaro’s cabinet as Minister of justice, but left 18 months later. He now poses as the president’s antipode, but he fundamentally shares Bolsonaro’s public safety agenda. Moro co-signed many of Bolsonaro’s Executive Orders that relaxed gun control and was the mastermind behind Bolsonaro’s “anticrime package,” which, among other issues, intended to give police officers legal backing if they killed criminal suspects “under fear, surprise, or violent emotion.” This would mean introducing a “qualified immunity” stipulation at the federal level in a country that has been sanctioned several times by the Inter-American Human Rights System of the Organization of American States (OAS) in cases concerning police brutality.

But while Bolsonaro and Moro clearly represent the institutional degradation of Brazil’s public safety, there is less certainty of where other candidates stand and what they would pursue in this area. Brazilian experts have long argued for the need of institutional reforms to reconfigure police organizations and improve governance, preferably applying lessons learned from other sectors like health and education. This was at the heart of Lula’s government plan in 2002, but was left behind, exchanged for less costly––politically speaking––and less effective solutions. 

Ironically, this agenda was only furthered during the brief and legally dubious administration of Michel Temer, who rose to power after Dilma Rousseff was impeached in 2016. Soon thereafter the Brazilian Congress passed Federal Statute No. 13,675/2018, creating a Public Safety System (SUSP). This law has been in force ever since, although it was systematically ignored by Moro and Bolsonaro. But its passage should be merely the beginning of a reform process that still requires changes, including to the Brazilian Constitution, whose article 144 on public safety did no more than reproduce the status quo inherited from the civil–military dictatorship.

Would Lula and other opposition candidates be willing to take the lead and finally reshape what is likely the most archaic portion of the Brazilian state? While only time will tell, the response is not without consequences. As the Bolsonaro tragedy has shown quite compellingly, the very future of Brazilian democracy may depend on it.

References

Cequeira, Daniel, et. al. Atlas de Segurança Pública. São Paulo: FBSP, 2021.

Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública. São Paulo: FBSP, 2011.

Kalil, Isabela. "Dreaming with Guns: Performing Masculinity and Imagining Consumption in Bolsonaro's Brazil." In Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance in Brazil, edited by Benjamin Junge, Sean T. Mitchell, Alvaro Jarrín, Lucia Cantero, 50-61. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Kalil, Isabela. "Emerging Far Right in Brazil: Who Are Jair Bolsonar's Voters and What They Believe." Dossier Urban Controversies, no. 3. São Paulo: São Paulo School of Sociology and Politics Foundation, 2018.

Nicolau, Jairo. O Brasil dobrou à direita: Uma radiografia da eleição de Bolsonaro em 2018. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020.

Fabio de Sa e Silva | Assistant Professor of International Studies & Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma | WBO Research Fellow