A survey by the Brazilian Public Security Forum has pointed out that 41.2% of Brazilians claim to recognize the presence of criminal factions or militias in the neighborhood where they live. According to the report “Fear of Crime and the 2026 Elections: The Triggers of Insecurity,” released on Sunday, the presence of organized crime “not only amplifies victimization but interferes with the rules of coexistence, alters sociabilities, and restricts trust in institutions.”
The research indicates that approximately 68.7 million people live directly with the territorial power exercised by these criminal organizations. It further highlights that while the perception of faction presence is greater in capitals and large urban centers, the expansion of criminal groups “has begun to operate through territorial diffusion, capillarity, and interiorization.”
According to the Brazilian Public Security Forum, factions such as Comando Vermelho, born in Rio de Janeiro, and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), born in São Paulo, have expanded their activities over the last decade into medium and small cities. For this expansion, they utilize “logistical routes, alliances with local groups, prison dynamics, and insertion into illicit and licit markets,” the non-governmental organization (NGO) observes in the report.
“This result reinforces the idea that the circulation of armed violence does not obey a simple urban hierarchy: it is strong in large cities, but also intensely reaches medium-large cities and, to a certain extent, small municipalities.”
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Commissioned by the NGO, the survey was conducted by the Datafolha Institute with people aged 16 or older on March 9 and 10 across 137 cities, featuring 2,004 face-to-face interviews and a margin of error of two percentage points.
The majority of respondents who recognize the presence of criminal groups in their neighborhoods—61.4%—acknowledge that the actions of these factions are not invisible. This percentage represents “about 42.2 million people living in contexts in which organized crime is perceived as a force that regulates local life,” according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum.
The study also showed that the fear of violence alters the routine of 57% of those surveyed and affects women and low-income populations, the so-called D and E classes, most intensely. Furthermore, the survey identified that 59.6% of Brazilians questioned stated they fear suffering physical aggression due to their political or partisan choices, representing six out of ten people and approximately 99.4 million of the population.
The report shows that this fear of being physically attacked for political choices, which stood at 68% in 2022, is now nearly 60%. The NGO highlights that the 2026 results do not seem to indicate a “dissipation of fear,” as indices “remain very high,” but rather an “accommodation of the fear of violence at a high level after an exceptionally tense moment in 2022.”
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The Forum also reveals that 40.1% of respondents claimed to have suffered at least one situation of violence or crime in the last 12 months in the country. According to the study, “insecurity in Brazil transcends the condition of episodic perception and takes the form of a persistent social climate.”
