Brazil murder rate similar to war zone, data shows 2 hours, 14 minutes ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060925/...me_brazil_dc_1

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - More than 150 Brazilians were murdered each day last year on average, putting Brazil on a par with some war zones in terms of its homicide rate, the Justice Ministry said on Monday.

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Some 55,000 Brazilians died of homicide in 2005 -- a few thousand more civilians than in three years of war in Iraq, according to leading estimates.

Brazil, a continent-sized nation of 185 million people starkly divided into rich and poor, has had notoriously high crime rates for years. Millions of poor live in urban slums and unpoliced rural areas where guns are easy to come by.

Though the murder rate is high, Marcelo Durante, coordinator of the Justice Ministry's report, said homicides have fallen slowly in recent years thanks in part to an initiative to collect guns from the streets.

Citizens have voluntarily turned in thousands of weapons in places like Rio de Janeiro, the famous beachside city whose urban slums have some of the highest crime rates in Brazil.

A referendum in 2005 to ban gun sales failed, in part because some voters had lost faith in police.

"It was the states that collected the most guns that saw crime rates fall most," said Durante, "but we have to remember it's not just about guns."

Other kinds of violent crime in Brazil are far more common than statistics show, Durante said, adding that urban surveys suggest only a quarter of all robberies and 15 percent of all rapes are reported nationwide.

"At least with homicide, we can be a little more confident most of the crimes are getting reported," he said.

Murders also declined in Brazil's largest city of Sao Paulo in recent years, Durante said. Earlier this year, however, a gang known as First Command of the Capital launched a series of attacks on police, banks and buses in which about 200 police, gangsters and innocent civilians were killed.

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Wasn't it Brazil earlier this year or late last year that a prison gang with ties to the outside declared war on the police? I remember reading about this last year and I think it was in Brazil. They had gun battles in some cities and I believe it was pretty much nation wide.

Looks like gun control doesn't work there either.

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I think I will put off my fall trip to Rio.

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good article lady. I could of swore we dicoused this very point a few months back but it is great that you brought it back up. The world isn't a safe place and we should be thankfull we live in such a sain country.

God bless the usa

This is what happens when you have a country without a strong middle class and poverty is beyond comprehesible to the poverty in the the U.S. On thing is for sure this sudden crime wave did not happen over night.

If Brazile wants to solve the crime wave disaster it must find a way to:

1. Eliminate corruption within the police force for starters.

2. Begin to build hope and institute a working model to build a legitimage middle class.

3. Develop a capitalistic engine/model whereas you re-distribute the horded wealth away from traditional historical spanish/portugese family oliarachies .

4. Reform Brazils corrupted systemic and ineffective political and judicial system.

Finally, the stability infrastructure of a florishing economic society is a Robust Thriving Middle. A middle class segment in society gives the poor hope that one day they can throw off the chains of generational poverty and join the middle class. Crime and Crimminals in itself although complicated is basically a microcosim of exploitation, hopelessness, ill-educated, broken homes and marriages.

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Also, give those people BACK their handguns....

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