At a private, off-the-record roundtable hosted by the Brazil Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners examined the main issues shaping Brazil–U.S. cooperation on public security. The discussion focused on the relationship between enforcement and prevention, the changing structure of organized crime in Brazil, and the constraints and opportunities for deeper bilateral coordination.
Latin America and the Caribbean account for roughly one-third of the world’s homicides despite representing less than 10 percent of the global population. In Brazil, public security has become a central political issue as concern grows over the territorial reach, operational capacity, and financial sophistication of criminal organizations such as the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV). These pressures formed the backdrop to the discussion.
The opening session framed the conversation around a core tension in public security policy: how to balance immediate enforcement demands with the need for longer-term prevention strategies. It also situated the discussion in the broader political context in Brazil, where public security is gaining importance ahead of the 2026 elections, and in the bilateral context, where both governments are considering new forms of cooperation on transnational crime.
The first panel focused on prevention and community engagement. Participants discussed the difficulty of sustaining long-term prevention policies in a political environment that often rewards short-term enforcement results. They also examined the need for stronger evidence, greater investment in youth- and community-based initiatives, and more differentiated responses to the varied structures of organized crime across Brazil.
The second panel examined the evolution of criminal organizations in Brazil and the limits of current institutional responses. The discussion addressed the unintended effects of incarceration policy, policing strategies, and fragmented state action, as well as the need for more coherent approaches that take the governance and economic dimensions of organized crime seriously.
A presentation on the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy explored the growing weight of counternarcotics and transnational crime in U.S. security policy and considered what this shift may mean for Brazil and for regional cooperation more broadly.
Throughout the discussion, participants repeatedly returned to three themes: the need to connect prevention and enforcement rather than treat them as substitutes; the importance of stronger institutional coordination; and the challenge of developing an agenda that is responsive to the increasingly transnational and economically sophisticated character of organized crime.
