Abstract
Drop of Homicide Death and Youth Violence in São Paulo, Brazil: Tackling the Challenges in High Violence Societies
Since year 2000 homicide death fell 63% in São Paulo Minicipality. What can explain such a huge drop in a small time frame? I will try to address this topic having in mind the challenging questions posed by Eisner and Nivette (2012) in a recent paper named “How to reduce the global homicide rate to 2 per 100,000 by 2060”. Our focus will be on homicide and specifically youth homicide, having Brazil and São Paulo Municipality, with interest in some specific very violent areas of the city, as examples to discuss the challenges for homicide death reduction in highly violent areas. Violence reduction in high violent areas, which suffer “a syndrome of characteristics” (Eisner and Nivete, 2012), should necessarily go beyond fragmented and focused violence prevention programs (all very necessary) to include actions aiming to reduce police violence and gross human rights violations, promote a positive presence of sate institutions, broaden the opportunity for the young population to access formal and legal networks, strengthening social cohesion and trust and reduce the power and presence of criminal organization. Broad and comprehensive programs, including both state and civil society are an important step to achieve an effective violence reduction.