ABSTRACT
Introduction Brazil’s economy is currently the seventh largest in the world and the top economy in South America, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$2.2 trillion in 2011 (World Bank 2013). Over the last decade, along with stable economic growth, the country has also benefited from improvements in social wellbeing – particularly through a combination of multi-billion dollar social welfare programs, such as Bolsa Família (Family Grant), which has been internationally praised as a model of effective social policy (Rizzini et al. 2011). In this context, between 2003 and 2009, the country’s poverty rate fell markedly, from 21 percent of the population to 11 percent (World Bank 2013). On the other hand, throughout the first decade of this century, several new policies – such as legislation introducing tighter controls on firearms and disarmament campaigns, for example – were implemented in Brazil to reduce violent crime levels. These measures are said to have contributed to the decrease in homicide rates in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city – which, from 2000 to 2010, has seen a remarkable drop in homicides by 63.2 percent (UNODC 2011; Waiselfisz 2011).
