Murders in Curitiba are on the loose. Over the past ten years, only one homicide out of four has been solved due to investigation failures in countless cases. The impunity was brought to light through an original study carried out by reporters from Gazeta do Povo who analyzed police inquiries and homicide procedures in the city for over 18 months.
The study has shown slowness in the search of witnesses, the incapability to analyze evidence and an incomprehensible difficulty to process the most basic information. In some cases, the police took 16 months to realize that a man shot in the Industrial City neighborhood had died of his wounds a few days after the assault.
According to the official statistics of the State Secretary for Public Safety, 5.806 homicides have occurred in Curitiba between 2004 and 2013. Over the same period, the State Justice received 1.314 cases that led to legal actions in addition to homicides are also included murder attempts cases. In this cases, the defendant is taken to a jury court where citizens decide whether there is enough evidence to lead to a condemnation.
These figures show that at least 4.492 homicides (77% of the cases) remain unsolved. These are inquiries that are still transiting in the various police units of the city or have been shut without condemnation. The crime resolution rate is of only 23%. According to the statistics from the National Bureau for Justice and Public Safety of Brazil (ENASP), the resolution rate for this type of crime reaches 65% in the United States, 80% in France and 90% in the United Kingdom.
PassiveThe situation is more than alarming, says Michel Misse, director of a research group on civil rights, conflicts and urban violence at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), because the murderer knows that he has little chance to be jailed for the crime. "This is a rational calculation that the criminal certainly takes into account", he affirms.Other specialists share Misse's opinion. "If public authorities are unable to invest and raise their technical infrastructure, it will always go backwards, with more and more homicides to be investigated. This ends up reinforcing impunity, and gives the impression that killing in Brazil is worth it," says Flavio Sapori, coordinator of the Research Center of Public Safety of the Pontifical University of the Minas Gerais (PUC-MG).
For Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, coordinator of the Map the Violence in Brazil program (Mapa da Violência no Brasil) which is used as a reference by the Ministry of Justice, the scenario brings an escalation of violence. "The aggressor is aware of this type of impunity. It does not necessarily mean that tolerance played a role in these statistics, but it has an influence on the high level of lethal violence."
