Panorama of Lethal Violence in the Context of
Segregation on the Atlantic Coast of Salvador
Lethal violence. Public security. Segregation. Socio-spatial. Racial
Salvador is the fourth most populous city in Brazil, with double the national murder rate (2021).
However, the highest rates fall on young and black men who live in low-income neighborhoods,
a phenomenon that seems to be endowed with greater complexity and which this research intends
to discuss. The locus of the study is the Atlantic Coast of Salvador, which, although not the region
with the highest homicide rates in the city, stands out for the dynamism of the real estate market
operating there and for the proximity of low-income and high-income neighborhoods. In this way,
we analyzed the lethal violence statistics (intentional homicides and deaths by police officers) for
the years 2018 to 2020, regardless of the intention, when practiced by an off-duty or on-duty police
officer. Under the view of the complexities of lethal violence (by complicity or omission of the
State), we seek to find its relationship with socio-spatial and racial inequalities in the Atlantic
Coast. For this, in addition to studying the socioeconomic indicators, we map the occurrences of
lethal violence and tabulate them, noting macro-relations. The areas of greatest and least
occurrence, in their approach, suggested that we investigate the micro-relationships in the affected
neighborhoods and, with that, the problematization of the relationship between violence and
“poverty”.