"Brazil's murder rate barely budged during the past decade, at around 26 per 100,000. But the geography of murder changed, notes Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz of the Instituto Sangari, a think-tank in São Paulo. In 1998 São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were more violent than average; Alagoas was not. Better policing and economic growth have seen the murder rate fall by nearly two-thirds in São Paulo and two-fifths in Rio over the decade. Criminals squeezed out of long-held strongholds followed the money to areas of new industrial development and tourist destinations. Illegal logging and land grabs, together with new cross-border routes for guns and drugs, stoked crime in the Amazon. And Alagoas, its state government debt-ridden and police force weak, corrupt and often on strike, was at times close to lawless." (Quoted from the article)