Femicide: the georeferencing of cases in a brazilian capital and its metropolitan region

Abstract

The aim of this research was to evaluate the spatial distribution of cases of femicides attended by the Instituto Medico Legal de São Luís/MA, between the years 2015 and 2021, according to the municipalities and neighborhoods of the occurrences. Cases referring to female victims were included in the research when it arrived for forensic examination and who presented in its Necropsy Requests and/or Police Report the classification of Qualified Homicide - Femicide. After registering the data in a spreadsheet editor, the addresses were punctuated in the Google Earth Program. The hot plots were produced by the ArcGIS Software. In the Kernel density map, there was a quantification of the relationships of the points within a radius of 5km, due to the low concentration of data. The total number of corpses analyzed at the IML was 9,301 cases, among which 1,111 were women, only 49 cases were classified as femicide, a prevalence of 4.41%. Femicide cases were observed in 14 different municipalities in Maranhão, with the city of São Luís with the highest number of registered cases. The subtypification of femicide is a serious problem due to the strict protocol in the search for traces that should be applied to all cases of violent death against women.