FEASIBILITY OF TOW METHODS OF CRIME REDUCTION IN RIO DE JANEIRO
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Violent crime has been considered the most seriously threaten in terms of social stability and citizens’ life and property safety. Murray et al (2013: 471) has evaluates there were 1 million homicides from 1980 to 2010 in Rio de Janeiro. But the homicide rate has gradually decreased in recent years. For example, according to OSAC (2013), Rio de Janeiro have dropped over 50 percent about homicides rates (homicides per 100,000 inhabitants). But the crime rates still prevail at the critical levels for the past 25 years in terms of robbery, rape, fraud, and residential thefts (ibid).
Violent crime are likely has become the major public security problem in Rio de Janeiro. Reichenheim et al (2011) states that in 2007, violence generated 12.5 percent of all deaths in Rio de Janeiro, which young male occupied the majority proportion (83.5%). According the statistics in 2011(De Justiça, 2012), there are 515,000 offender were imprisoned, almost all prison has been packed. Therefore, it is urgent task for the Rio de Janeiro government to implement that reduce the violent crime by some techniques and ensure availability. This report will analyzes feasibility of tow techniques are UPP (Police Pacification Unit) and better education respectively in terms of the cost and effectiveness, and exploring the most suitable method to drop the violent crime rates in Rio de Janeiro.
2.0 BACKGROUND
Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of the area. There are 16,000-kilometer land border and an 8,000 kilometer shoreline, which offer optimum condition for transport cocaine to Europe and Africa (In SightCrime, 2014), Rio de Janeiro has become the major cocaine trade place. The Gross Domestic Product reached US $ 2.253 trillion and The Gross national income was US$ 11,500 per capita in 2012 (The World Bank, 2014). Even though Brazil’ GDP and GNI are not low, the inequality rates are higher than another country, the investigation from Central Intelligence Agency (2013) shows that the GINI index was the 16th highest among 136 countries in the world, which was 51.9. Hence, Rio de Janeiro still faced considerable challenges, which is offering the whole individuals’ needs for health care, education and work availability.
Rio de Janeiro government has implemented innovative Police Pacification Unit, in tons of slum communities, which posed some significantly security promotion (Document of the World Bank, 2012). But the government and citizens still suffer threat from the two largest domestic criminal gangs, which is the First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando Capital - PCC), another one is Red Command (Comando Vermelho), which involves the international trade about drug, blackmail as well as increasing abduction(In SightCrime, 2014). Therefore, Rio de Janeiro embraces an increasingly large market as the platform for drugs and cocaine trade.
3.0 PRESENTATION OF OPTIONS
3.1 Police Pacification Unit
As mentioned in background, the government has embarked the pacification program to control the violent crime in Rio de Janeiro’ favela, which is named Police Pacification Unit (UPP). Thus an ambitious strategy that government bid to grasp the domination of territories long commanded by drug gangs (Freeman, 2012). Every favela community must bear a three-stage process with the UPP implement: the first step is invasion, and give prior warning for the community members. The second step is a flag means the beginning of the pacification process, covering intelligence gathering and maintain the stabilization by the elite forces of police. Thirdly, the favela community will be dominated by UPP (Hendee, 2013).
3.2 Better education
Better education refers to Rio de Janeiro government should encourage citizens to build the awareness of education and allocate more financial budget to schooling to reduce violent crime. As a long-term technique,
