Urban violence in São Paulo

Today homicide is the highest cause of death of young people in Brazil, Nancy Cardia, senior research at the University of São Paulo`s Center for Study of Violence, examines urban violence in São Paulo arguing that violence has become a major public health problem. As in this onther countries, violence in Brazil is not homogeneously distributed throughout society. Violence in concentrated in certain cities and in specific areas of the cities. It victimizes young males living in the poorest areas of cities (the deprived areas at the peripheries of the cities which were opened up and made habitable by the people themselves) where the public services that now exist arrived precariously after people had settled the area. Cardia argues that the growth of violence is also being indirectely encouraged by federal, state and amunicipal government budget cuts resulting in less resources to invest in law enforcement and in a modicum of social safety networks: health, education, public services, and violence prevention programs. Cardia focuses on violence that is concentrated un the periphery of the Municipality of São Paulo, spilling over the borders to neighboring municipalities of the Metro area. Through na examination of the literature on the impact of violence on individuals and communities and a series of surveys taken in 1999, Cardia investigates why such deprived areas ar the loci of this violence and how under stressful circumstances, the conditions can facilitate violence.