Why Do We Keep Arriving After the Crime?  2026 Elections - Presidential Candidates and Government Plans for Public Security

2026 Presidential Candidates: Government Plans for Public Security

Search description: What do Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro, Romeu Zema, Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos, and the other presidential candidates propose for Public Security in Brazil’s 2026 Elections? Explore their government plans and the broader perspective proposed through Body-Territory and Decolonial Neuroscience.

Public Security Is One of the Main Concerns of Those Choosing Brazil’s Next President

In Brazil’s 2026 Elections, anyone searching for the government plan of a presidential candidate will likely encounter proposals involving police forces, criminal organizations, borders, prisons, intelligence, drugs, violence against women, and prevention.

That is no coincidence.

Violence has become one of the main concerns of Brazilian voters. Recent polls consistently place Public Security at or near the top of the population’s priorities.

At the same time, there is an apparent contradiction: national homicide indicators have improved in recent years, yet this improvement is not experienced equally by all Brazilians.

Some bodies remain much more exposed to violence than others.

Some neighborhoods continue to live under rules that are different from those governing other neighborhoods.

Some women still reorganize their schedules, clothing, routes, and relationships to avoid situations that may put their lives at risk.

Some young people grow up learning invisible borders that define where they can and cannot go.

This leads to the question guiding this first article:

Why do we keep arriving after the crime?

Police, investigation, intelligence, incarceration, and justice are essential to any State capable of responding to crime.

But the Body-Territory perspective adds an earlier question:

What needs to happen before crime so that it finds fewer conditions in which to emerge, grow, recruit people, and control a territory?

What Do the Presidential Candidates Propose for Public Security in Brazil’s 2026 Elections?

Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court makes available the government proposals submitted by candidates running for the Presidency of the Republic. (TSE Open Data)

By the end of the registration period, 13 names had entered the presidential race in the 2026 Elections: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Flávio Bolsonaro, Romeu Zema, Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos, Augusto Cury, Clariana Barão, Edmilson Costa, Hertz Dias, Pablo Marçal, Rui Costa Pimenta, Samara Martins, and Wilson Grassi. (Folha de S.Paulo)

Their proposals differ substantially.

The purpose of this article is not to determine which presidential candidate has the best government plan.

First, we present the direction of each proposal.

Then we do something different:

we ask what could be added if Public Security were also considered through the perspective of Body-Territory.

Lula — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, presidential candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT), mainly emphasizes greater federal coordination, integrated intelligence, border control, financial action against criminal organizations, territorial recovery, and preventive policies.

In confronting organized crime, his program emphasizes weakening criminal organizations financially and increasing coordination among security institutions. Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, despite their profound political differences, converge on issues such as border control, isolation of criminal leaders, and economic weakening of criminal organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Recovering a territory does not have to mean only removing a criminal organization from it.

It could also mean asking:

What will occupy that space afterward?

School?

Healthcare?

Culture?

Employment?

Public lighting?

Transportation?

The State?

A security policy can win an operation and still lose the same territory again years later.

Flávio Bolsonaro — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Flávio Bolsonaro, presidential candidate for the Liberal Party (PL), presents a proposal strongly focused on tougher responses to crime.

Among the measures presented are lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 16, allowing criminal liability from age 14 in serious crimes, creating new federal prisons, tougher sentence enforcement, and classifying criminal factions as terrorist or narco-terrorist organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

His strategy also emphasizes surveillance, territorial control, and financial action against criminal organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

A policy based on removing members of criminal organizations could gain a second metric:

How many people were prevented from being recruited to replace them?

If one leader is arrested, another person may take their place.

For this reason, repression and prevention do not need to be alternatives.

They can be different stages of the same policy.

Romeu Zema — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Romeu Zema, presidential candidate for the Novo Party, places tougher criminal penalties and confrontation with criminal factions among his security proposals.

At the beginning of the campaign, he defended the construction of a large prison for leaders of criminal organizations, tougher laws, and expansion of the prison system. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

In addition to asking how many criminals were removed from circulation, we could monitor:

How much territorial control did the criminal organization lose?

And also:

How much of that territory was effectively occupied by legitimate institutions?

A police station may be present even when schools, healthcare, transportation, employment, and institutional trust are absent.

The State can be physically present and still remain socially absent.

Ronaldo Caiado — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Ronaldo Caiado, presidential candidate for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), has made Public Security one of the central pillars of his presidential campaign.

His proposal emphasizes integration among police forces, intelligence, economic action against criminal organizations, stronger border protection, and tougher measures against organized crime. Caiado also supports classifying major criminal factions as terrorist organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

A policy could simultaneously measure two things:

criminals removed from organizations

and

people who did not enter those organizations.

The first measures repressive capacity.

The second begins to measure preventive capacity.

They are not the same thing.

Renan Santos — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Renan Santos, presidential candidate for Missão, presents an agenda of strong institutional transformation.

In Public Security, his candidacy supports measures such as high-security mega-prisons and a very tough response to criminal factions. His campaign integrates this agenda into broader reforms of the State. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Even an intervention capable of rapidly breaking the armed control of an organization leaves another question:

How do we prevent that control from being rebuilt?

The sequence could stop being merely:

operation → imprisonment

and become:

operation → recovery → services → mobility → legal economy → permanent institutional presence.

Augusto Cury — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Augusto Cury, presidential candidate for Avante, presents proposals connecting Public Security with technology, artificial intelligence, emotional education, and a culture of peace.

His program stands out for placing emotional health and socio-emotional education at the center of his broader vision of government. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Artificial intelligence can be used to identify patterns of crime.

But it could also help identify territorial patterns that emerge before violence grows:

school dropout,

domestic violence,

youth recruitment,

degradation of public spaces,

changes in local commerce,

substance dependence,

institutional abandonment.

Technology could be used not only to identify who committed a crime, but also to perceive where the conditions for more crime are beginning to emerge.

Clariana Barão — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Clariana Barão, presidential candidate for Christian Democracy (DC), places social protection, the safety of women and children, and modernization of State structures among her priorities. Her platform also addresses border control and economic action against criminal organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Following the money of criminal organizations is essential.

Body-Territory would add:

follow the territory as well.

Where does illegal money finance recruitment?

Where does it replace the formal economy?

Where does it begin to shape community relations?

At what point does a criminal organization stop being merely a group selling illegal products and begin to determine how people live?

Edmilson Costa — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Edmilson Costa, presidential candidate for the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), places security within a broader project of socialist transformation of the State.

His political field also relates violence to structural inequalities and supports a profound reorganization of Public Security institutions. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

There is an important point of proximity here with the idea that violence cannot be understood solely as individual behavior.

But Body-Territory would also require measurement.

If we transform the economic and social conditions of a territory:

Did violence decrease?

Did fear decrease?

Did recruitment decrease?

Did freedom of movement increase?

A social hypothesis must also be able to encounter evidence.

Hertz Dias — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Hertz Dias, presidential candidate for PSTU, presents proposals that break with the current model, including demilitarization of police forces and major changes in drug policy. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Changing police institutions alters one part of the system.

But it does not automatically transform:

illegal markets,

recruitment,

substance dependence,

domestic violence,

territorial control,

inequality of opportunities.

Our question would remain:

Which territorial configuration creates more real freedom for the people who live there?

Rui Costa Pimenta — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Rui Costa Pimenta, presidential candidate for the Workers’ Cause Party (PCO), presents a proposal for radical institutional transformation, including dissolution of the Military Police and defense of civilians’ right to own weapons. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Regardless of the debate over who should possess defensive capacity, there is an earlier question:

Why do certain bodies need to live permanently prepared for violence?

A territorial policy could seek to progressively reduce the everyday need to coexist with fear, threat, and coercion.

Samara Martins — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Samara Martins, presidential candidate for Popular Unity (UP), connects Public Security with the living conditions of the working class, reorganization of police forces, and confrontation of violence against women. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Violence against women reveals something fundamental:

territory is not merely a street, neighborhood, city, or forest.

A home can be a territory of protection.

But it can also become a territory of surveillance, dependence, and violence.

Security needs to ask:

Can this body move, decide, and exist autonomously within the territories in which it participates?

Wilson Grassi — Presidential Candidate: Government Plan for Public Security in 2026

Wilson Grassi, presidential candidate for Democrata, includes among his proposals financial action against criminal organizations and the possibility of a national consultation on models of high-security prisons. (Folha de S.Paulo)

What Would Body-Territory Add?

Weakening the economy of crime creates another question:

What economy replaces it?

A community must be able to work, produce, move, and survive without depending on illegal structures.

This is where security also meets economics.

Pablo Marçal — Presidential Candidate in Brazil’s 2026 Elections

Pablo Marçal, presidential candidate for PRTB, is included among the current presidential candidacies. However, in the journalistic review published shortly after the registration deadline, there was still no government plan available on the official platform that would allow us to safely attribute a specific Public Security proposal to him. (Folha de S.Paulo)

For this reason, we apply a rule that will remain throughout this series:

When we cannot identify a verifiable proposal in an official document, we will not fill the gap with what we imagine a presidential candidate believes.

This section should be updated if an official government plan becomes available.

Thirteen Presidential Candidates. One Question That Can Be Asked of All of Them.

The government plans of the 2026 presidential candidates begin from very different concepts.

Some emphasize:

prisons,

sentences,

police,

Armed Forces,

borders.

Others emphasize:

intelligence,

changes in policing,

prevention,

inequality,

education,

institutional reorganization.

We do not need to transform these differences into a competition in this article.

We can ask all of them the same question:

Is the State Arriving Before Those Who Intend to Control the Territory?

A criminal organization does not control a particular place only because it has weapons.

In some contexts, it may begin to provide:

income,

protection,

credit,

rules,

punishment,

identity,

belonging,

conflict mediation.

When this happens, we are discussing more than criminality.

We are discussing power over a territory.

Latin America Has Long Taught Us to Think About Body, Violence, and Territory Together

This discussion does not need to begin exclusively with references from the United States or Europe.

Argentine anthropologist Rita Laura Segato, who has a long academic trajectory in Brazil, studied violence, sovereignty, masculinity, and territoriality through the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Her analysis helps us understand that certain forms of violence do not affect only an individual: they can also function as demonstrations of power over bodies and territories. (University of Brasília Repository)

Another fundamental contribution comes from Maya-Xinka thinker and activist Lorena Cabnal and territorial community feminism.

In this Latin American tradition, defending land-territory is connected to defending body-territory. The experience of Indigenous women in Guatemala helped build a perspective in which violence, coloniality, body, community, and territory cannot easily be separated. (AmeliCA)

The BrainLatam 5D Body-Territory model is not identical to these formulations.

But there is an important dialogue:

How much do we lose when we analyze violence by removing the body from history and the individual from the territory in which perception was formed?

Decolonial Neuroscience: The Brain Participates, but It Does Not Participate Alone

The Decolonial Neuroscience perspective we propose does not seek to remove the brain from the discussion.

It seeks to avoid treating the brain as if it perceived the world alone.

Fear involves neural processes.

Threat involves neural processes.

Attention involves neural processes.

Decision-making involves neural processes.

But none of them occurs outside a history.

Imagine two children looking at the same police vehicle.

For one, that image may represent protection.

For another, it may represent threat.

The visual object is similar.

But it encounters two bodies with different previous experiences.

The stimulus arrives now. History arrived before it.

This is where 5D Consciousness becomes relevant to Public Security.

Our present perception encounters spaces already partially configured by previous experiences.

Learned fear, community relations, witnessed violence, institutional trust, dreams, language, family, and territorial experiences participate in what later becomes perceived as threat or protection.

This does not mean perception is arbitrary.

It means that perceiving is also encountering what has already been lived.

From the Isolated Brain to Brains in Relationship

Contemporary neuroscience is also developing tools that allow us to observe human interaction in ways that are closer to real life.

Studies using fNIRS hyperscanning, for example, make it possible to simultaneously record cortical activity from two people while they interact.

This methodological shift matters to our discussion because it moves part of the question from:

“What happens in this brain?”

to:

“What happens when two organisms interact?”

Decolonial Neuroscience adds another layer:

And where did these organisms learn to interact in this way?

In the family?

At school?

In the community?

Within a religious tradition?

On social media?

Under violence?

Within an Indigenous community?

In a favela?

In a gated community?

In a territory controlled by a criminal organization?

In a territory where the State is trusted?

The brain remains fundamental.

But it no longer appears as an abstract organ separated from the world.

The BrainLatam Proposal: Security Before

We are not proposing replacing police with social assistance.

We are not proposing replacing prisons with education.

Nor are we claiming that crime has a single cause.

Our proposal is different:

Security Should Also Be Treated as a Property of Body-Territory.

Public policy could be organized around three moments.

1. Before the Crime

Monitor:

school,

dropout,

health,

domestic violence,

substance dependence,

income,

opportunities,

public lighting,

transportation,

culture,

sports,

community trust,

youth recruitment,

presence of illegal economies.

2. When Crime Happens

Strengthen:

investigation,

intelligence,

police,

justice,

border control,

financial tracing,

victim protection,

the prison system.

3. After Territorial Recovery

Ask:

What remained?

If an operation ends and all previous conditions remain unchanged, the territory may still be available for another group to occupy.

A New Indicator: How Many People Did Not Enter Crime?

We can usually count:

arrests,

weapons seized,

drugs seized,

operations,

warrants,

homicides.

These are important indicators.

But Body-Territory suggests another category:

How many life trajectories were not captured by crime?

This is much harder to measure.

But perhaps that is precisely part of the problem.

What is easy to measure tends to receive funding.

What happens silently before crime may remain invisible.

Security as Lived Freedom

A truly safe territory would not simply be one with greater capacity for punishment.

It would be one in which a person has more real possibilities to choose their trajectory.

A child can play.

A young person can move between neighborhoods.

A woman can end a relationship.

A family can open a business.

A community leader can disagree.

An Indigenous community can remain on its territory.

A person can refuse an invitation from a criminal organization because other real possibilities for belonging, income, and future exist.

In this sense, Public Security approaches something larger:

Lived Freedom.

Not merely freedom written into law.

Freedom that the body can actually exercise within a territory.

The Question for Brazil’s Presidential Candidates in the 2026 Elections

Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro, Romeu Zema, Ronaldo Caiado, Renan Santos, Augusto Cury, Clariana Barão, Edmilson Costa, Hertz Dias, Pablo Marçal, Rui Costa Pimenta, Samara Martins, and Wilson Grassi present different ways of thinking about Brazil’s next government.

Each presidential candidate has different priorities, instruments, and concepts of Public Security.

Our goal is not to erase those differences.

Nor is it to select one proposal on behalf of the reader.

Decolonial Neuroscience and Body-Territory simply add a question that can be applied equally to all government plans:

After implementing their Public Security policy, will that Body-Territory have more possibilities to live without fear, coercion, or dependence on illegal powers than it had before?

And we add a second question:

Will the State be able to perceive when a territory begins to lose those possibilities before the next crime occurs?

Perhaps this is the fundamental change.

Not abandoning the ability to arrive afterward.

But also developing the capacity to arrive before.

Because a truly transformative security policy may not be measured only by the number of crimes it can punish.

It may also need to be measured by the number of crimes that find increasingly fewer conditions in which to happen.

References and Sources for Further Reading

Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE). Official database of candidacies and government proposals for President in Brazil’s 2026 Elections. (TSE Open Data)

Folha de S.Paulo. Overview of the 13 presidential candidacies and their main proposals for the 2026 Elections. (Folha de S.Paulo)

Folha de S.Paulo. Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro: different strategies and areas of convergence in financial, territorial, and prison-based approaches to criminal organizations. (Folha de S.Paulo)

Segato, Rita Laura. Territory, Sovereignty and Crimes of the Second State: Writing on the Bodies of the Women of Ciudad Juárez. University of Brasília / Revista Estudos Feministas. (University of Brasília Repository)

Cabnal, Lorena and territorial community feminism. Discussions on body-territory, land-territory, Maya-Xinka Indigenous women, and the defense of life in Guatemala. (AmeliCA)