In an election period, many candidates, mostly from the right and far-right, propose to 'bukelize' Brazil as a public security measure, meaning to adopt the same model of combating here.El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's crimeIn general, this model is characterized by...Mass incarcerationHardening of sentences and a series of suppressions of constitutional guarantees.
An argument used by proponents of this strategy is the drop in homicides: in 2015, El Salvador was the most violent country in the world, with a rate of 106 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In 2023, the rate had fallen to less than two homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
To: (Note: The provided text is incomplete. Assuming the intended content is about a journalistic article, here is a general translation based on the given information.) "At (date/time), regarding..."BdF InterviewFelipe Angeli, Advocacy Coordinator at Justa, refutes the figure as a pure justification for Bukele's policy being efficient for public safety, explaining it is grounded in penal populism. Angeli also assesses that attempting to import this formula into the Brazilian reality represents a political marketing fallacy that ignores historical, social, and demographic chasms. "It's a country of 6 million inhabitants, smaller than Belo Horizonte, a population smaller than Belo Horizonte. It has nothing to do with Brazil except for the fact that we are in Latin America. It's populism, the search for easy answers, fallacies, much to the liking, unfortunately, of this marketing-focused politics we've seen, regarding a problem as grave as the public safety issue," he evaluates.
This strategy of mass incarceration, widely advocated by far-right leaders through proposals promising hundreds of thousands of new arrests, ignores that Brazil has been applying the same recipe for the past two decades with disastrous results. "The result was the expansion of criminal factions within prisons across the national territories," he criticizes.
In light of this, Angeli questions the effectiveness of persisting in the error: "Over the past 20 years, we have increased the Brazilian prison population by 500,000 people. What happened? Is the Brazilian citizen safer?"
For the expert, the expansion of organized crime's territorial control proves that the logic of "doing the same things expecting different results" is a sign of total irrationality in public management.
Felipe Angeli also reflects on what he calls the "false dichotomy," which ends up hindering the real debate about public safety policy, which is the idea that combating crime is incompatible with respecting fundamental rights and guarantees. "What I think we are putting forward here, in fact, is a discussion between the model of public safety we want and a totalitarian state that does not respect rules and has no brakes to pursue these criminals," he defines.
Angeli argues that rigor in law enforcement and severe punishment of criminals do not require suspending the Constitution or sacrificing fundamental rights. "It is not necessary, to be rigorous and harsh in the fight against crime, to throw the Constitution away. It is not necessary to tear up fundamental rights and guarantees. On the contrary, it is fundamental rights and guarantees that will make us develop as a country, that will create a just, inclusive society for us."
The true solution for Brazil, the Justa coordinator argues, lies in the rule of law under the protection of democracy, not in speeches of barbarism and superficial magical solutions. "Brazil is unique, solutions are ours, and we have solutions. We already have a series of promising measures, we already know what to do, we already have a lot of experience," he assesses, mentioning, for example, debates about demilitarization and multidisciplinarity in security policies. "Brazil is capable within its model. It is not possible to copy a ready-made model from El Salvador, Norway, South Africa, China. The model is Brazilian. That's what I personally would like to see candidates seeking, obviously, inspired by international experiences, but seeking the Brazilian model," he argues.
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The text provided is incomplete. Please supply the full text for an accurate translation. (Note: Even with a complete text, I would need to know the specific context to ensure the translation is appropriate for a journalistic setting.) BdF InterviewAirs Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. onBrazil's Radio FatoRadio 98.9 FM in Greater São Paulo.