Brazil’s “criminal economy” does not appear on any national balance sheet. Yet the cost of violence, contraband, tax evasion and environmental crime can be measured in the tens of billions of dollars every year and serves as a major drag on Brazil’s economic growth and stability.
Attempts to quantify this burden go back at least a decade. An influential 2017 study by the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that crime and violence consumes roughly 3.4% of gross domestic product across Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil among the worst-affected countries. A later assessment by Brazil’s own Institute for Applied Economic Research put the annual cost of violence alone at 5.9% of GDP.
Such figures are usually calculated by looking at the cost of violence and crime on the lost earnings of people killed or incarcerated through crime, the medical costs of dealing with the aftermath of violence, the increased cost of security, and the value of damaged or stolen property.
