At least 173 people have been killed this year by extrajudicial lynch mobs in Brazil, a new analysis published Tuesday finds.
The Guardian newspaper scanned local news coverage and combed official records, and found a figure demonstrative of a country more open to allowing citizens to take the law into their own hands.
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“People feel so vulnerable,” said Cesar Barreira, head of the violence studies lab at Federal University of Ceará. “A lynching is a communal act in response to a sense of impotence… It’s a hunt for an infection inside a social group.”
A report published in November 2015 by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security found that 57 percent agree with the popular saying “a good criminal is a dead criminal.”
Some suspect the death toll could be far higher, as the government does not keep track of instances of vigilantism.
“The crime is not written into the penal code. Official data does not exist,” said Ariadne Lima Natal of University of São Paulo.
Analysts believe economic insecurity could be driving the rise in vigilante attacks. Central and South America is considered by some the world’s most unequal region.
Brazil is mired in a historic recession — about 12 million Brazilians were out of work as of October, up from 8.8 million in 2015. Brazilian crime remains a severe problem; almost 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil in 2014.
Violence in Rio de Janeiro threatened the Olympic Games earlier this year. Much of the city’s despair emanates from the favelas, slums where drug syndicates reign.
“All of the sudden everybody started running at the gas station and hiding behind things,” said German sailing coach Max Groy, who got caught in a gunfight. “So I thought, that might be time to just lay flat in the motor boat and hide as well.”
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Brazil Confronts an Epidemic of Vigilante Lynch Mobs originally appeared on usnews.com
