MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula seeks his own security recipe to counter Brazilian right wing's tough-on-crime narrative

The plan also includes investments to regain control of 138 penitentiary facilities through drones, scanners, and metal detectors

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday unveiled in Brasília a public security plan worth around USD 2.25 billion aimed at weakening the finances of organized crime, regaining control of prisons, curbing arms trafficking, and improving homicide investigations, five months ahead of October's presidential election. The package is designed to give the government a distinct identity on one of the issues where public opinion sees the ruling party at its weakest against the right wing's punitive narrative.

“This is not just the launch of a program, it is a signal to organized crime that, in a short time, they will no longer dominate territories [in Brazil] — they will be returned to the Brazilian people,” the president said, flanked by ministers and the head of the Federal Police. The initiative is directed primarily against the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), with some 40,000 members, a presence in around thirty countries, and estimated annual revenues of USD 2 billion, and against the Comando Vermelho (CV), its historic rival, with some 30,000 members. It also targets the militias made up of former police officers and smaller regional outfits.

One of the central pillars is financial cooperation with Brazil's 27 states and with the United States. Lula recalled having raised the matter last week in Washington with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, and noted that some of Brazil's most-wanted criminals are sheltered in Miami, that the country's mafias launder money in Delaware, and that a substantial share of illegal firearms in circulation originates in the United States. The president insisted that organized crime's tentacles “are also in businesses, in football, and in the National Congress,” shifting the responsibility for the phenomenon beyond the image traditionally associated with the favelas.

The plan also includes investments to regain control of 138 penitentiary facilities through drones, scanners, and metal detectors, with the goal of preventing imprisoned crime bosses from running their operations from inside their cells. Forensic teams investigating homicides will be reinforced, and the tracing of the thousands of illegal weapons in circulation will be upgraded.

The president's main electoral rival, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, sentenced to 27 years in prison, advocates lowering the age of criminal responsibility and is pressing Washington to designate the PCC and the CV as foreign terrorist organizations. At a rally last weekend in Florianópolis he warned criminals that, should he win the election, “they will go to prison or be neutralized.” Brazil has the world's third-largest prison population, after the United States and China, and recorded around 44,000 violent deaths in 2024, 14% of them at the hands of uniformed officers, according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum. In October, a police operation in Rio de Janeiro left 121 dead, the deadliest in the country's history.