International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 141

International Journal on Criminology
of GDP), medical and therapeutic services (0.05 percent of GDP). Between 1996
and 2015, the additional costs directly related to crime and violence rose from
113 billion reais to 285 billion ($26 billion to $66 billion) every year. During the
same period, spending on public safety alone went from thirty-two billion reais to
ninety billion annually ($7 billion to $21 billion). Brazil's federal states cover 80
percent of this spending, and the federal government the other 20 percent.
Between 1996 and 2015, cumulative security spending rose by 170 percent
in the public sector and by 135 percent in the private sector, with particularly
negative social outcomes, since the number of murders in the country rose from
35,000 to 54,000 annually during the same period.
The overall cost of crime in Brazil today weighs more heavily on the private
sector: 149 billion reais in 2015, compared to 135 billion reais for the public sector.
Total losses for the entire country during the 1996–2015 period are estimated to be
around 4 trillion reais ($920 billion). According to the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB), in 2014, these costs made up 53 percent of the total cost of crime
in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 78 percent of the total cost of crime in
the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay). This study
emphasizes Brazil's continental scale and highlights the need to see the country in
all of its regional diversity, since different states weigh more or less heavily on these
national figures.
Conclusion
On October 28, Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro as President of the Republic,
with a little more than 55 percent of all votes cast. One of his first acts as
president was to appoint the judge Sergio Moro, known for leading the
massive anti-corruption campaign, “Lava Jato,” as Minister of Justice. In this role,
Moro will have direct authority over the federal police, the federal highway police,
the national secretariat of public security (similar to the interior ministry), and the
national prison service. As an expert in criminal law and procedures, he should
be able to influence legislation and public safety policy, and hopefully bring Brazil
out of its current predicament, with the instability and economic losses described
above. Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Federal Police, Mauricio Valeixo, is
an experienced officer of the law who has participated in exchange programs with
the FBI in the United States and is the former director of the agency's intelligence
service. He may well continue and improve on the work of his predecessors, Leandro
Daiello and Rogério Galloro. As for the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro,
the former federal judge Wilson Witzel, he has already announced several highly
controversial public safety proposals, many of which have received approval from
police officers, but faced criticism from academics and criminologists. The governor
of São Paulo, João Dória, named a military reservist to lead that state's public
safety department, the first time a non-civilian has held the position since 1979.
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