In the past three decades, Brazil has experienced record levels of violence. A problem that was almost exclusive to large centers, today it has reached medium and small Brazilian cities. High rates of crime and violence have negative effects on economic growth and quality of life. According to the report “Economic Costs of Crime in Brazil”, developed in 2018 by the Special Secretariat for Strategic Affairs of the Presidency of the Republic, the costs of violence with public security, private security, insurance and material losses, legal costs, loss of productive capacity, incarceration and costs of medical and therapeutic services correspond to 4.38% of the Brazilian GDP.

The main victims of this violence in Brazil are young people. According to data from Datasus (2017), of the expressive 63,748 homicides computed in 2017, 38% were people aged 15-24 years. The death of these young people has a big weight on the costs of crime, which estimates that the present value of the loss of productive capacity is around 550 thousand reais for each homicide of young people aged 13 to 25. The cumulative loss of productive capacity resulting from homicides exceeded 450 billion reais between 1996 and 2015.

In this scenario, some Brazilian states are exceptions and stand out positively as successful cases in reducing violent deaths. The state of São Paulo, located in the southeastern region of Brazil, is one such example. From 1996 to 2006 the state maintained an average rate of 35 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, which represented almost 150 thousand deaths in the period. More recently, in the 2007-2017 interval, the homicides has been drastically reduced, dropping the rate 13.33 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants.

In order to understand the possible causes of this decline, through a local newspaper, we analyzed homicides and attempted homicides in the city of Ribeirão Preto, located in the north of the state of São Paulo. Currently the city has 694 thousand inhabitants, according to IBGE / 2018 data, and homicide rates with similar behavior as those reported historically for the state. The city reduced its homicide rates from 41.07 in 1997 to 8.06 homicides for every 100 thousand inhabitants in 2017, according to data from Datasus.

The project called Newspaper "A Verdade", uses as a main analysis tool the data tabulation of a widely circulated newspaper in the city of Ribeirão Preto. It had a daily report and a police section of great importance dedicated to covering the occurrences of homicides, attempted homicides and drug trafficking. The news about the crimes brought in addition to the numbers of occurrences / victims, which Datasus already makes available in its data, information such as:

Crime scene addresses;

Addresses of those involved in the crime;

Crime motivation;
Characteristics of those involved (name, age, profession, skin color, if they participated in a gang and if they had been through the police);

If the crime was related to the First Capital Command (PCC in Portuguese), a criminal group;

If the crime has been solved;

If those involved were arrested.

The analysis of each event from Newspaper "A Verdade" focused on the years 1996 to 2006. This period included the phase of great decline in homicide rates per 100 thousand inhabitants in the city and in the state of São Paulo. In addition, it is possible to note that the number of victims calculated through the news is very similar to the information obtained from official sources, as can be seen in the figure below:

Figura 1: As taxas de homicídios em Ribeirão Preto, 1997 a 2017