Every day, at least two children and adolescents are killed by the police in Brazil.
Some make it into the pages of newspapers. That was the case of João Pedro Mattos, 14, who died at home in São Gonçalo, in Baixada Fluminense, in May; the girl Ágatha Félix, 8, killed in Complexo do Alemão, in the north of Rio de Janeiro, in September last year; or the boy Kauan Alves, 16, hit in the face on the morning of last Christmas during an operation by the São Paulo Military Police to repress a funk dance in the neighborhood of Jabaquara, south of the capital.
Between 2017 and 2019, police killed at least 2,215 children and adolescents in the country. The number of deaths has been growing. In 2017, they represented 5% of the total violent deaths in this age group .; last year, it was 16%.
The exclusive survey was carried out by the Brazilian Public Security Forum at the request of Folha and considered only the units of the federation that had information on the age of the victims in the three years analyzed.
Children between 0 and 19 years old were classified as children and adolescents, following Unicef's recommendation (United Nations Children's Fund) and WHO (World Health Organization).
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon