Evaluating the Effect of Homicide Prevention Strategies in São Paulo, Brazil: A Synthetic Control Approach

Abstract

Although Brazil remains severely affected by civil violence, the state of São Paulo has made significant inroads into fighting criminality. In the last decade, São Paulo has witnessed a 70 percent decline in homicide rates, a result that policy-makers attribute to a series of crimereducing measures implemented by the state government. While recent academic studies seem to confirm this downward trend, no estimation of the total impact of state policies on homicide rates currently exists. The present article fills this gap by employing the synthetic control method to compare these measures against an artificial São Paulo. The results indicate a large drop in homicide rates in actual São Paulo when contrasted with the synthetic counterfactual, with about 20,000 lives saved during the period. The theoretical usefulness of the synthetic control method for public policy analysis, the role of the Primeiro Comando da Capital as a moderating variable, and the practical implications of the security measures taken by the São Paulo State government are also discussed.Apesar de o Brasil permanecer gravemente afetado pela violência civil, o estado de São Paulo tem realizado progressos significativos no combate ao crime. Na última década, São Paulo testemunhou uma queda de 70% em suas taxas de homicídio, um resultado que formuladores de políticas públicas atribuem a uma série de medidas de redução de criminalidade adotadas pelo governo estadual. Embora estudos acadêmicos recentes pareçam confirmar esta tendência de baixa, ainda não há estimativas do impacto total das políticas estatais sobre a taxa de homicídios. O presente artigo visa preencher tal lacuna ao empregar o método de controle sintético para comparar tais medidas contra um São Paulo artificial. Os resultados indicam uma grande queda nas taxas de homicídio quando contrastadas com o contrafactual sintético, com cerca de 20,000 vidas salvas durante o período. A utilidade teórica do controle sintético para a análise de políticas públicas, o papel do Primeiro Comando da Capital como variável moderadora, e as implicações práticas das medidas de segurança adotadas pelo governo do estado de São Paulo também são discutidas.

The Armed Arena: Arms Trafficking in Central America

“…In September 2018, more ambitiously, Honduras's legislature passed a new arms law whose ten main provisions address many of the gaps and weaknesses this article highlights: its establishes registration offices outside the two main cities; widens IBIS capacity; tightens Armería sales, such as by requiring presale ballistic tests of all weapons; strengthens regulations on munitions purchases and public carry; transfers all seized arms directly to the forensics office; requires registration of all arms held by security officials; creates new categories of permits based on intent, such as for sport or private security; increasing the age to twentyone for possession; and reducing the individual possession from five to three. As documented in several studies (Freire 2018), gun control can help bring down crime. Officials and activists credit the legislation in part to the existence of eight different parties in Congress-rather than the traditional two that long thwarted reform-and tenacious efforts by influential legislative groups like the Congressional Commission on Security and Citizen Prevention, which spearheaded a 2014 bill to restrict weapons carrying (El Heraldo 2014a) that was shot down by the private security sector.…”

Evaluación del impacto de políticas de seguridad ejercidas entre 2007 y 2014 sobre la tasa de homicidios en Ecuador: Método de Control Sintético (MCS)

“…En Kansas se encontró que un proyecto de disuasión focalizada redujo la tasa de homicidios en 21 por ciento el primer año; este efecto desapareció en los siguientes años (Fox y Novak, 2018). Y en Brasil se midió el impacto de un conjunto de medidas punitivas de control que se tomaron en São Paulo sobre la tasa de homicidios por 100 mil habitantes, y se reportó que el impacto medido correspondió a un aproximado de 20 000 vidas salvadas entre 1999 y 2009 (Freire, 2018). Por el contrario, en Connecticut se detectó que el incremento en el mínimo de edad para procesar en el sistema penal a un joven como adulto de 16 a 18 años no produjo ningún cambio perceptible sobre los índices de violencia juvenil (Loeffler y Chalfin, 2017).…”

Checking Executive Personalism: Collegial Governments and the Level of Democracy*

“…The SCM provides “a reliable comparative case by adopting a purely data‐driven process in order to select a counterfactual” (Freire 2018: 236). Although the description of the rationale behind the SCM is beyond the scope of this research – there are much better sources for this purpose (e.g., Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), Abadie et al (2010, 2015)) – one of its more significant characteristics is that “by combining semi‐parametric matching with differences‐in‐differences, SCM provides a rigorous yet versatile method to evaluate time‐dependent treatment effects” (Freire 2018: 237).…”

“…The causal effect is the difference between the treated and the synthetic cohort. The larger the post‐treatment gap, the stronger the impact of the treatment (Freire 2018).…”