Give peace a change: analysis of homicide reduction in a metropolitan area of southern Brazil

The changes in the age structure of the population, poverty or migration are often used to justify violence rates in Latin American countries, although there are no conclusive studies on this relationship. The bibliography that lists inequalities and violence, taking countries as analysis unities, indicates that the higher the socioeconomic heterogeneity greater violence. But studies comparing cities or neighborhoods of the same city show apparently contradictory results. For the Metropolitan Region of Campinas (MRC), Brazil, Aidar and Soares (2006) found that victimization against urban violence is higher in homogeneous areas, with low-income residents, than in more heterogeneous areas. The rate of homicides in the MRC has grown from 7.3 to 38.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants between 1980 and 2000. However, the trend seems to be reversing and the rate fell to 14 homicides per 100,000 in 2010. This paper studies violence in the MRC, analyzing mortality by homicides from a demographic and spatial perspective. These analyses aim to contribute to a wider understanding on the evolution of mortality by violent causes, its interaction with the physical and social spaces of the metropolitan areas, adding to this contribution the systematization, analysis e search for quality of available information.