“The Covid-19 pandemic almost turned the numbers of criminal activities into zero, because people stayed at home”, says Dr. Elizeu Soares Lopes, criminal lawyer, and nowadays police ombudsman of São Paulo. To think about the impacts of the 2020 pandemic on crime in São Paulo, there is more than one social sphere to be looked at.
The government and the pandemic consequences
The first question that should be asked is if the pandemic impacted directly on the new crime numbers, or if it had a bigger impact underneath the surface. The answer to that question can be solved by analyzing a few pieces of data. In 2021 the unemployment number in São Paulo state exceeded the national number, marking 13.4% according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, while in 2019 the unemployment rate marked 12% in the same period.
Not only does unemployment data show us that the pandemic turned the life of a lot of people upside down, but the number of recently homeless is much scarier. A survey made by São Paulo city hall showed that only in 2021 the population of homeless reached the number of 31.884 people, 31% more in comparison with 2019. Those millions of people passed to live in tents on the city sidewalks.
“So, you have a population that suffers the absence of decent housing, absence of an urban relationship, that is a healthy environment, or other kinds of negligence that turns to build this violent scenery on our cities, in particular, the São Paulo state”, says Dr. Elizeu. So, seeing that way, the violence that unemployed people or homeless people suffer from the state during the pandemic period can make them commit crimes actions. “When you solve those problems, when you have a healthy place, government presence, where people are at least working in a dignified condition, you’re going to have a better and nicer environment. Only this will not solve it all, you have human interference, but at the minimum, it mitigates a lot of these effects” completes the criminal lawyer.
Staying at home doesn’t stop violence
It may seem that during the pandemic of Covid-19, some crimes had a declined in their numbers, but it does not mean that crime activity didn’t happen during that period. Data collected by the Brazilian Forum of Public Security shows that between March 2019 and March 2020 the total aid provided to women victims of violence passed from 6.775 to 9.817, a raise of 44.9%. And the number of femicides also went up, from 13 to 19 cases (46.2%).
“The Covid-19 pandemic caused the phenomenon that people stayed confined at home for a long period, it is clear that decreased a little the numbers of violence like robberies, thefts, but increased other types of violence, like the violence against women, or child, conducted by people from the family bosom.”, that is what the city ombudsman affirms. “Data shows that this period increased the number of calls to women’s police stations”, he concludes.
In São Paulo state some measures were taken to improve the care about domestic violence, like electronic reports, apps for women in vulnerable situations, and projects like the program SOS Woman. Although Dr. Elizeu tells, “I think the methods used to face domestic violence wasn’t sufficient, but I would say it was a singular situation, it needed generosity, intellectual including, to comprehend that we were living an extraordinary moment into the human relationships”.
What the pandemic leaves us now?
Talking about the Coronavirus’s consequences on the crime in São Paulo, it is crystal clear that the pandemic turned a big part of the society into a state of misery.
“One of the big problems of urban violence, after all if you look at the violence against the patrimony, it happens in function of the number of people unemployed, and unfortunately a part of them use criminal activity to survive”, observes Dr. Elizeu.
Not only that shows that the São Paulo that comes back in 2022 to a slow reconstruction of normal life, where people start to get out of their homes more frequently, is different. This São Paulo right now looks a bit less safe than the city before the pandemic. According to Public Security Secretary statistics, between January and March 2019 registers reveal 38 cases of robbery followed by death, while in the same period in 2022 data marks 48 cases.
Dr. Elizeu Lopes opines, “Now, it is needed to review that you have a situation not only of unemployment, that the minimum salary is one of the minors from the point of view of the people living. And with higher fees, inflation, people losing their power of buying every day, all of that is like pure nitroglycerin to hatch that violence”, still completes “And the cause, with no doubts, have to do with this dissymmetry on the construction of the São Paulo society”.
In a large sphere, looking at 2022 violence, that is extremely necessary to talk about the increase in gun sales. With the new politic of the Federal Government, in 2021 the number of guns licensed by the Military Police was 204.3 thousand, 300% more than in 2018. “It is good to think that the action of the Federal Government contributes to this violence when making flexible the sale of guns, it seems that it is 700 thousand of people with fire guns and buying large caliber weapons, with a huge lethal ability”, affirms the ombudsman, “Who should have weapons are the police and military forces, that the specifications are well-defined, the citizen doesn’t need to have a gun” he completes.
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The article above was edited by Giulia Lozano.
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