Mortalidades por causas violentas: uma análise dos homicídios em Santa Maria - RS

Abstract

The deaths of murder occupy position of prominence, and people have been struck by massacres, executions and clashes between gangs of drug dealers, who increasingly seem to take over of the daily life of urban centers. Studies on homicides only recently came to be covered by public health in our country. Moreover, the lack of knowledge about the murders makes the policies and preventive actions difficult to be established. Thus, the aim of this research was to study homicides occurred in the city of Santa Maria, RS, Brazil, in order to identify, characterize and locate the sites of major events of homicide in this city and to aid in the planning of preventive measures. The variables of interest in this study were: age and sex of the victim, age and sex of the author, previous passage by the police, date of occurrence, time and type of weapon, from Police Investigations (PI), Civil Police Stations, Police Stations for Women, Police Stations for the Protection of the Elderly and Police Stations for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, in the period from January 1st, 1995 to December 31st 2006. For the characterization of homicides, a descriptive analysis of data was carried out. It was found that most of the victims belonged to the age group from 15 to 29 years (46.65%) and males were predominant among the victims. In relation to the authors, 62.27% belonged to the age group from 15 and 29 years, and males were more frequent, stressing that the majority of aggressors had passage by the police. During the study period, the highest mortality rates for murder were 12.43 / 100 thousand inhabitants in 1996 and 12.11 / 100 thousand inhabitants in 2001. The firearm was the most frequent tool used by the authors. Weekends were the periods that the number of cases was higher, and the night period was the most violent, or with the highest number of homicides. It was found that the Salgado Filho District, at the northern region of the city, presented the highest rate of homicides and also the highest number of resident criminals, followed by the region of Nova Santa Marta in the northwestern region. Since the results indicate predominance of murders and criminals in certain regions, it is expected that these data could contribute for public safety preventive measures to occur.