The main objective of this article is to verify the impact of both the incarceration rate and the number of police officers over the homicide rates. Overall, our results suggest that the increase in both the incarceration rate and the number of police officers are important do deter homicides....

This article verifies the different effects of legal repression over homicide rates across Brazilian states. We analyze the impacts of two different kinds of legal repression: incapacitation (rate of individuals serving time in jail in relation to 100,000 inhabitants) and deterrence (rate of...