THE TERPAZ PROGRAM AS AN INTEGRATED PUBLIC SECURITY MODEL: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE NEIGHBORHOODS SERVED IN BELÉM (2021-2025)

Abstract

The Territories for Peace Program (TerPaz), established in Pará in 2019 and turned into state policy by Law No. 9,771/2022, combines public security actions carried out by the Military and Civil Police with social services delivered at the Peace Plants (UsiPaz). This study comparatively analyzed the evolution of intentional lethal violent crimes (CVLI) and robberies in the five Belém neighborhoods served by a UsiPaz between 2021 and 2025, using 2018 as the baseline. It is a quantitative, descriptive and comparative multiple case study based on aggregated secondary data and on documentary analysis of the actions of the Military Police of Pará (PMPA), using descriptive statistics and exploratory Spearman correlations with exact permutation tests. Combined CVLI in the five neighborhoods fell from 263 to 65 victims between 2018 and 2024 (75.3%), and robberies decreased by 72.0% on average. Between 2018 and 2023, however, the decline in these neighborhoods (76.8%) was equivalent to that observed in the rest of Belém (76.2%). Program policing began simultaneously in the five neighborhoods in 2019, whereas the UsiPaz units opened in a staggered sequence; the opening order matched the ranking of CVLI reductions up to 2023, an association that does not survive correction for multiple testing. TerPaz is part of a broad trajectory of lethal violence reduction in which the PMPA acts as the operational basis of the security axis, and the specific contribution of the social axis requires evaluation with a more robust counterfactual.