Supporters argue this is an effective step to combat organised crime, but critics describe it as a state-sanctioned execution. To many residents of Rio’s poorest communities, living in the shadow of both drug gangs and police raids, it feels like something out of a dystopian movie.
Imagine waking up in a community knowing that your life or your child’s life might be worth money to someone with a badge and a gun. The people sworn to protect you are now given financial incentives to treat the streets like a hunting ground.
César Muñoz, the director of Human Rights Watch, said: “Giving bonuses to police for killings is not only outright brutal but also undermines public security by creating a financial incentive for officers to shoot rather than arrest suspects.”
Power
It won’t be the wealthy in gated communities who’ll suffer. It won’t be the politicians drafting this bill protected by bodyguards, living behind marbled walls.
It’ll be the young man or woman walking home from work, the child playing soccer in an alley. Undoubtfully, mistakes will be made, because under this law ‘mistakes’ might mean bonuses.
On 24 January, Jeronimo Gomes da Silva, 44, a resident of Complexo do Alemão, one of Rio’s largest favelas, reported that a grenade was thrown from a drone into his home.
He said: “They threw a grenade from a drone onto my balcony, destroying my house. My family and I almost died here.”
Reports have also emerged of agents from Rio de Janeiro’s military police Special Operations Battalion (BOPE) entering a home in Complexo do Alemão and robbing a family, an incident that highlights abuse of power.
Favelas
Speaking with Brasil de Fato, Jacqueline Muniz, an anthropologist, political scientist, and specialist in public security, warned that this bill could have far-reaching effects, particularly in how it blurs the line between policing and organised crime.
She explained: “The police start organising organised crime itself, so they don’t just get close to the crime, they become partners, associates, okay?
“If you kill people who know about organised crime, you’re sabotaging the investigation itself and the production of intelligence that would serve to identify how organised crime works, who’s who within organised crime. You’re rigging the police for partisan purposes, for all sorts of rigging.
“This ends up revealing corruption schemes, a logic of partnership with crime, right? It reveals, therefore, that death doesn’t result from a high-risk action, but rather becomes a commodity. It’s as if the state has militarised its police force and even cheapened the lives of police officers.”
Brazilian authorities claim the policy would boost morale in a force stretched thin by violence and underfunding, while sending a tough message to cartels and militias that dominate Rio’s favelas.
Violence
But the cost of this action is crystal clear: human lives, particularly those of young, poor, and Black men who already make up a disproportionate number of victims in police confrontations.
Every year, Brazilian police are responsible for more than 6,000 deaths, many of them young Black men. Black Brazilians are about three times more likely to die in confrontations with the police compared to white Brazilians.
In 2024, Rio’s military police and civil police killed 703 people, almost two per day. At least 86% were Black. Between January and August this year, they’ve killed 470 people.
When the state decides that some lives are worth less, that some deaths are worth cash, it tells an entire class of people: you are disposable.
International groups, including Human Rights Watch, have condemned the bill warning it’d encourage extrajudicial killings, deepen mistrust between communities and the state, and establish a cycle of violence that has already scarred Brazil for decades.
Targets
Injustice reigns and scars are visible. Families who have lost sons in police raids hardly ever see accountability. Courts rarely prosecute officers involved in questionable shootings. Adding financial rewards only makes justice more elusive.
Brazil stands at a crossroads. One path leads to more violence, more mistrust, more broken families, and the other demands courage and will, investing in education, creating real opportunities in the favelas, reforming police systems, and addressing poverty as the root of the crime.
Crime in Rio isn’t born from lack of policing, but from inequality.
The easy solution are bullets, the hard road is building a society where police do not need to be blackmailed to protect, where children don’t grow up expecting to die young, where safety comes from justice, not from fear.
Policies like this reduce people to targets, strip away humanity until all that’s left is a number: one more ‘suspect’ eliminated, one more bonus earned.
Survival
For Muniz, the debate around public security goes beyond policing strategies and touches the core of Brazil’s democracy.
She argues that real reform can only happen when armed institutions are brought under civilian control and when elected governments are able to exercise their authority without challenge.
“If we want to play democracy, we must do it for real. The first dimension of democracy to guarantee legitimately elected governments, whether left or right, is the control of the sword. Something that has become out of control in Brazil,” Muniz warned.
The world should not look away because what’s happening in Rio isn’t just Brazil’s problem, it’s a stark warning. Any society that starts placing a bounty on its own people, edges closer to societal collapse.
This bill is not protection nor justice, this is blood money, and history will not forgive those who turned human lives into a pay-per-kill system.
In the end, this issue isn’t about crime rates or police bonuses, it’s about what kind of world we choose to build, one where life is valuable, or one where death has a price. Unless another path is chosen, the streets of Rio may soon resemble a game where survival itself is the prize.
This Author
Monica Piccinini is a regular contributor to The Ecologist and a freelance writer focused on environmental, health and human rights issues.