The speed of the investigation improved between 2010 and 2013
The survey carried out by Gazeta do Povo shows that the speed of the investigations has significantly improved over the past three years. In 2010 for example, the average length of time to set up an inquiry was 122.7 days. In 2013, the average was 7 days. The lapse of time to interview the first witness also dropped to 1.9 day.
Police chief Rubens Recalcatti, head of the Homicide Unit since 2011 who is about to give way, says that the delay to set up an investigation was longer before his coming into office. This issue has been solved. Recalcatti will be replaced at the head of the unit by Maritza Haisi, who already occupied the position in 2011.
Riad Braga Fahrat, the chief of the Civil Police of the state of Paraná, judged serious the fact that only 23% of the cases made it to court. For him, the ideal solution would be "to reverse" this figure so as to judge the authors of 77% of the crimes. According to him, promising that this will happen shortly is impossible, as it would be "a boast". "But I can promise that we are going to strive for this", says Farhat, who entered into office a week ago.
To him, the delay to set up inquiries is not so harmful, as it results from bureaucratic issues that do not necessarily delay the investigations. But the delay to interview witnesses is more problematic.
IntelligenceThe State of Paraná Secretary for Public Safety, Cid Vasques, stated that the improvement in the control of the felony complaints and police inquiries of homicides has come progressively. According to him, a meeting with the new head of the police was organized to discuss the establishment of the Business Intelligence (BI) system. "The BI, developed jointly with Celepar, will give us the opportunity to control all the procedures registered by all the delegations of the state," he wrote in an email. The SESP affirms that it introduced a system to control lethal felony complaints in order to obtain a detailed analysis of the homicides and their respective inquiries.
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."