Note: I had submitted this post a few days ago, but 24 hours later, after some good traction and discussions, it was unfortunately deleted due to me forgetting to write [OC] in the title. I am reposting with a couple of corrections and a new violin chart at the end.

Over the past few days, I built a database from the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública) to better understand how crime has evolved across Brazil's states. The 13 charts in this post summarise more than a decade of data on the crimes that most directly affect people's daily lives, and that drives the perception of Brazil as a violent country abroad. This perception is spread first and foremost by Brazilians themselves.

In the Brazilian statistics, "robbery" refers to theft with violence or threat ("roubo"), not ordinary theft ("furto"). The dataset also breaks robberies down into categories such as street robbery, mobile phone robbery, vehicle robbery, residential robbery, cargo robbery and others.

While homicide rates often receive the greatest international attention, they are not the crime that the vast majority of Brazilians worry about in their everyday routines. For most, the perception of public safety is shaped much more by the risk of being robbed on the street, having a phone or vehicle stolen through violence, or experiencing other forms of violent robbery. For that reason, most of the analysis focuses on robbery rates. I did however include intentional violent deaths ("murders") for comparison.

Although public perception takes longer to shift, the downward trend is clear throughout the country, even if it is moving slower in some states than in others. Unfortunately, Rio de Janeiro, the postcard of Brazil, is moving at a much slower pace than Brazil as a whole. Murders have also been dropping for the past ten years, although at a slower pace than robberies. The two aren't really the same story: they come from very different social realities and are driven by different factors, so there's no reason to expect them to move at the same pace.

Data source

All data come from the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, published annually by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. I compiled information from every edition between 2018 and 2026. Each yearbook includes excel spreadsheets containing detailed crime statistics for the two most recent years, allowing the construction of a consistent historical series for robbery indicators (although some data points are missing). For intentional violent deaths, the 2026 edition provides annual data covering 2012-2025, enabling a longer comparison for homicide trends.

The charts include:

• Total robberies in Brazil (absolute numbers and rates).
• Heatmaps for total robberies, cell phone robberies, vehicle robberies, residential robberies, cargo robberies.
• Ranking evolution of robbery rates across states.
• A comparison map of robbery rates in 2016 and 2025.
• Distribution of robbery rates across states over time.
• Scatter plots comparing robbery and cargo rates and absolute numbers by state.
• Heatmap and violin chart for intentional violent deaths (murders).

All source excel files, from 2018 to 2026, can be found here:

https://forumseguranca.org.br/publicacoes/anuario-brasileiro-de-seguranca-publica/

You have to look for them year by year.

Tools used

The extraction code was built in Python, with Claude help, to retrieve the information from the xlsx files - the files are not fully standardised. A database in SQLite was created for storing the crime statistics, and then I used another independent script to read from the db and generate the charts.

Over the past few days, I built a database from the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública) to better understand how crime has evolved across Brazil's states. The 11 charts in this post summarise more than a decade of data on the crimes that most directly affect people's daily lives, and that drives the perception of Brazil as a violent country abroad. This perception is spread first and foremost by Brazilians themselves.

In the Brazilian statistics, "robbery" refers to theft with violence or threat ("roubo"), not ordinary theft ("furto"). The dataset also breaks robberies down into categories such as street robbery, mobile phone robbery, vehicle robbery, residential robbery, cargo robbery and others.

While homicide rates often receive the greatest international attention, they are not the crime that the vast majority of Brazilians worry about in their everyday routines. For most, the perception of public safety is shaped much more by the risk of being robbed on the street, having a phone or vehicle stolen through violence, or experiencing other forms of violent robbery. For that reason, most of the analysis focuses on robbery rates. I did however include intentional violent deaths ("murders") for comparison.

Although public perception takes longer to shift, the donward trend is clear throughout the country, even if it is moving slower in some states than in others. Unfortunately, Rio de Janeiro, the postcard of Brazil, is on the slowest side here. Murders have also been dropping for the past ten years, although at a slower pace than robberies. The two aren't really the same story: they come from very different social realities and are driven by different factors, so there's no reason to expect them to move at the same pace.

Data source

All data come from the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, published annually by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. I compiled information from every edition between 2018 and 2026. Each yearbook includes excel spreadsheets containing detailed crime statistics for the two most recent years, allowing the construction of a consistent historical series for robbery indicators (although some data points are missing). For intentional violent deaths, the 2026 edition provides annual data covering 2012-2025, enabling a longer comparison for homicide trends.

The charts include:

• Total robberies in Brazil (absolute numbers and rates).
• Heatmaps for total robberies, cell phone robberies, vehicle robberies, residential robberies, cargo robberies, and intentional violent deaths.
• Ranking evolution of robbery rates across states.
• A comparison map of robbery rates in 2016 and 2025.
• Distribution of robbery rates across states over time.
• A scatter plot comparing robbery rates and absolute numbers by state.

Over the past few days, I built a database from the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook (Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública) to better understand how crime has evolved across Brazil's states. The 11 charts in this post summarise more than a decade of data on the crimes that most directly affect people's daily lives, and that drives the perception of Brazil as a violent country abroad. This perception is spread first and foremost by Brazilians themselves.

In the Brazilian statistics, "robbery" refers to theft with violence or threat ("roubo"), not ordinary theft ("furto"). The dataset also breaks robberies down into categories such as street robbery, mobile phone robbery, vehicle robbery, residential robbery, cargo robbery and others.

While homicide rates often receive the greatest international attention, they are not the crime that the vast majority of Brazilians worry about in their everyday routines. For most, the perception of public safety is shaped much more by the risk of being robbed on the street, having a phone or vehicle stolen through violence, or experiencing other forms of violent robbery. For that reason, most of the analysis focuses on robbery rates. I did however include intentional violent deaths ("murders") for comparison.

Although public perception takes longer to shift, the donward trend is clear throughout the country, even if it is moving slower in some states than in others. Unfortunately, Rio de Janeiro, the postcard of Brazil, is on the slowest side here. Murders have also been dropping for the past ten years, although at a slower pace than robberies. The two aren't really the same story: they come from very different social realities and are driven by different factors, so there's no reason to expect them to move at the same pace.

Data source

All data come from the Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, published annually by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security. I compiled information from every edition between 2018 and 2026. Each yearbook includes excel spreadsheets containing detailed crime statistics for the two most recent years, allowing the construction of a consistent historical series for robbery indicators (although some data points are missing). For intentional violent deaths, the 2026 edition provides annual data covering 2012-2025, enabling a longer comparison for homicide trends.

The charts include:

• Total robberies in Brazil (absolute numbers and rates).
• Heatmaps for total robberies, cell phone robberies, vehicle robberies, residential robberies, cargo robberies, and intentional violent deaths.
• Ranking evolution of robbery rates across states.
• A comparison map of robbery rates in 2016 and 2025.
• Distribution of robbery rates across states over time.
• A scatter plot comparing robbery rates and absolute numbers by state.

Edit: the rate for vehicle robbery is per 100,000 registered vehicles, not per inhabitsnts.

Essa informação está na página 102 do Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, divulgado hoje. O Rio até melhorou os números, mas é o ÚNICO estado Brasileiro com taxa maior que 500 por 100.000 habitantes. Até quando?? Vejam Santa Catarina, Minas Gerais, Tocantins, Goiás. O Rio tem salvação??

Santuário do Caraça, located in Minas Gerais, Brazil, is an example of Gothic revival architecture. Its church was completed in the late nineteenth century, with bell tower inspired by medieval European cathedrals. It was built with local quartzite stone.