VIDEO: The ballet school for under privileged girls from São Paulo favelas

Discover the ballet project teaching girls from one of Sao Paulo´s most brutal districts and offering hopes and dreams to children who could otherwise face exposure to crime, drugs and early pregnancy.


The dance studio in São Paulo is a world away from the neighbouring favelas most of these girls were born into. Here, they find a temporary refuge through a children's dance program.

Organised crime in SP; The ethics of the PCC and why they are here to stay

Graham Denyer Willis wrote an interesting article for the Boston Review this week.

In it he provides an insight into some of the organisational structure of the Primeiro Comando do Capital (PCC), the largest organised crime gang in the country and the one which controls the city and much of the state of São Paulo. Willis invested considerable time shadowing police officers in São Paulo and was granted access to internal PCC documents which are occasionally found when a member is detained or houses/vehicles are searched.

There are a number of interesting observations, some of which are real eye openers to those unfamiliar with the highly structured way the PCC maintains a firm background presence in the city.

Carandiru prison

The first point made is that ironically the PCC, like many other criminal organisations, was born out of the state’s inadequacies. That doesn’t mean that the state police was not hard enough on criminal gangs. To the contrary, the seed was in the lack of basic provisions supplied to prisoners, the lack of care and the violation of human rights most notably in the Carandiru massacre which was the direct reason for the formation of the PCC. By failing to provide a minimum standards of public care, São Paulo gave an opportunity for the creation of an organisation which was willing to fulfil this role.

Having developed at pace since Carandiru, the range of “services” provided by the PCC to its members (known as “brothers”) is astonishing. It includes, but is not limited to, free transport for family prison visits, legal aid provided by a team of standby lawyers, the covering of all funeral costs in the event of the death of a brother, banking services through an internal cash loan service and perhaps most worrying of all an weapons bank for the temporary loan of a pistol or a machine gun.

The PCC has a gun loaning service

However, these services come with certain obligations. One of the standout characteristics of organised mafias and gangs is their strict moral codes and the  PCC is no exception. Rules exist over repayment of loans, which types of guns are permitted for certain types of needs, when murder is allowed (it must be pre-authorised by the leadership) and when it isn’t (the PCC does not allow children to be killed, for example) and they are strictly enforced. Therefore ethics as well as behaviour is dictated and there are spreadsheets which track all member activity in detail.

As Denyer Willis puts it, under the PCC rule “crime is at once a practice, an occupation, and an identity”. This serves to fuel loyalty but also to bind together a group which stretches far and wide across the country and depends on working collectively from both inside prison and out. The existence of principles also justifies its existence and is self-reinforcing in the face of what is perceived as a corrupt and often unjust public police force and justice system.

In a previous post we saw that one of the reasons for the dramatic drop in homicide rates in São Paulo is the PCC’s impact in the poorer suburbs and, as the PCC are “at least as concerned with safety and security as they are with making money”, it would seem difficult to imagine their dissolution or loss of power, in the near future.

Read the full article here on the Boston Review

Strange but True: Neymar branded cocaine capsules found in São Paulo

What happened yesterday is something to rival any of the other oddities that we like to post from time to time.

The arrest of a male suspect as part of an early morning drug haul in São Vicente, coastal São Paulo. Nothing uncommon in that. But this particular stash of cocaine was divided into handy easy to use capsules complete with nozzles and branded "Neymar". Yes, Neymar.

When questioned by police over the use of Neymar's image and the accompanying slogan "Boas Festas", the man explained that it served to highlight the product is of the highest quality.

Someone has been studying marketing..

A police picture of the offending capsules

Blocking cell phone usage of jailed gang members in São Paulo

Anyone who was here last year and witnessed the escalating death toll of policemen knows that the Primeiro Comando do Capital (PPC), the criminal gang which operates in São Paulo, is a hugely powerful force despite having up to half of its 15,000 members in prison. Part of the reason for that is the ease with which mobile phones are smuggled into prisons and used from within. The urban violence which spread throughout the city in 2006 was famously alleged to have been coordinated primarily from inside prisons thanks to mobile phones.

Cellphones being Smuggled into Brazilian prisons is common

All of that, though, may be about to change.

Brazilian firm Innovatech and Israel's Suntech are both vying for the R$1,1 billion ($484million) contract to run cell phone blocking technology across the prisons of the state of São Paulo. The idea being to jam cell phone signals coming from within the prison in order to reduce coordinated crime and victim reprisals.

Both companies were recently involved in secret trials of their cell phone denial technologies at high security prisons and it now seems that this long-promised initiative will finally become reality by year end. During one of the trials at Mogi das Cruzes prison, over 1500 active sim cards (some of which presumably belonged to prison staff) were detected and the cell phone difficulties incurred by inmates is said to have resulted in 23 calls to the customer helplines of major Brazilian operators. Helplines which, once the scheme is implemented, will have very few ways to assist these particular customers.

Police car chases and crashes into plane suspected of illegal imports

I always tell my friends that watching the regional news in Brazil is far more exciting than it is back home.

Today's evening news highlight came from Ribeirão Preto, inner state of São Paulo. It's basically a dramatic showdown between the "Policia Federal" and suspected smugglers of electronic goods originating from neighbouring Paraguay which culminates in the police agents driving their car at speed into a suspect airplane in order to immobilise it.

Video is below courtesy of Estadão TV:

Straight out of a movie scene!

Getting used to car crashes in São Paulo

When I first got here I saw quite a few car crashes and thought it was a coincidence but then I got used to them and realised that the screech + bang combo is part and parcel of daily life in Sampa. Mostly I've seen low speed bumps which have taken off wing mirror, scratched bumpers or dented the bodywork but there are lots of more serious incidents.



According to the 2008 figures published by the University of São Paulo, Department of Transportation there are on average 70,9 fatalities per 100,000 vehicles in Brazil which means more than 35,000 people die in road accidents every year. To put that in context the we are talking 15 fatalities per 100,000 vehicles in the US and 7 per 100,000 in the UK so without exaggerating it's fair to say safe road safety is not exactly the same as back home.

Here are 3 of the high profile ones that the São Paulo media picked up on in the past 30days:

08/08/2011 Lorry that somehow managed to fall from one motorway on to another below it at Raposo Tavares in North West São Paulo

30/07/2011 - Car which overturned and killed a pedestrian close to my house in Vila Madalena

09/07/2011 Porsche being driven at 150km/h in a residential area of Itaim Bibi hits car that drove through a red light at night (a common and accepted practice to avoid theft and carjacking)

I won't go into the details but all 3 drivers responsible for each incident were able to walk away from their vehicles unharmed. Unfortunately the same can't be said of the people they hit.

I have a driving license but I've never owned a vehicle and something tells me this is not the best city to get back into driving...

Reflections on São Paulo H1 crime figures 2011 vs 2010

Following a scandal over the sociologist Túlio Kahn who is accused of supressing his own crime figures whilst clandestinely selling the data to private companies, Geraldo Alckmin, the governor of São Paulo, anounced that forthwith crime figures would be published monthly and broken down by district as opposed to every 3 months at city level only. That was back in March 2011.

Now that the full first semester is in we have the usual articles comparing 2011 to 2010 and yesterday a good few were celebrating a 29% fall in homicides in São Paulo capital. Now, don't get me wrong, a drop in murder rate is usually a good thing but there is some detail in the stats that doesn't make as nice reading as the 29% fall headline would seem to imply:

• First up, violent crime may have dropped in the last few years for various reasons and some may have dropped versus 2010 which is all good but they have dropped from an already very high level - however big the city is if you compare the below figures with the same 180day period in most western countries your per capita incidence metric will be through the roof. 

• Although murder fell by 29%, attempted murder (which is similar in terms of intent but perhaps lacking in execution (excuse the pun, poor taste I know)) rose by 18% which suggests that the murder drop is not as dramatic and part of it is perhaps coincidental. Either that or the assasins are getting clumsier. 

• Murder is not the only crime on the list. Drug trafficking is up, as is car theft and GBH. As you can imagine these were not exactly low in 2010 but they all increased. Car ownership did increase too so we would have to look at whether the rise is proportional (i.e. the risk to car owners is the same) but in absolute terms in went up 

• Another interesting one to notice is that the incident of hostage/kidnapping for ransom is actually statistically very low. If you were to judge by the conversations of the wealthier residents of São Paulo they would have you believe this was extremely likely to happen, everyone has a story they have heard about kidnapping, but if you look at the stats there were only 13 cases in H1 2011. Unlucky number for some but contrary to the media hype around it quite a low number for a city of 20m. So maybe a nice topic to sell papers with but not necessarily the most worrying criminal activity in SP.

Full table below (sorry, no translation this time)

Ocorrências na capital paulista	1º semestre 2010	1º semestre 2011	Diferença
Nº de vítimas de latrocínio	32	47	47%
Latrocínio	32	46	44%
Tentativa de homicídio	480	567	18%
Furto (outros)	83.320	98.112	18%
Tráfico de entorpecentes	2.802	3.263	16%
Lesão corporal dolosa	17.038	19.765	16%
Roubo de veículos	17.414	18.796	8%
Roubo a banco	76	78	3%
Furto de veículos	21.106	21.076	0%
Estupro	1.210	1.186	-2%
Lesão corporal culposa por acidente de trânsito	13.422	13.002	-3%
Roubo de carga	2.186	2.108	-4%
Roubo (inclui roubo de carga e banco)	56.676	54.026	-5%
Homicídio culposo (inclui mortes em acidentes)	460	428	-7%
Homicídio culposo por acidente de trânsito	426	378	-11%
Nº de vítimas em homicídio doloso	596	501	-16%
Homicídio doloso	568	470	-17%
Extorsão mediante sequestro	16	13	-19%
Lesão corporal culposa (outras)	998	799	-20%