Evaluation of “Em Frente Brasil”, project in São José dos Pinhais/PR, (2019–2021) under the view of the economics of crime

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of the pilot project Em Frente Brasil on the rates of homicide and robbery followed by death in São José dos Pinhais from 2019 to 2021, through the use of the synthetic control technique, which is capable of generating a projection of what São José dos Pinhais would be like without the intervention. We use GDP per capita and the IPARDES Indexes of municipal performance of municipalities in Paraná with a population over 100.000 inhabitants to generate this counterfactual. This data was limited to the period from 2014 to 2021. The article contributes to the literature by being one of the first to evaluate this pilot project in Brazil. Results show that the pilot project may have contributed to the reduction of 31 to 36 homicides between 2019 and 2021, although the likelihood of the improvement occurring by chance cannot be ruled out.