Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unveiled a $3.3 billion plan last night aimed at tackling the violence and high murder rates that plague many cities.
Brazil has the world's fourth-highest murder rate with about 45,000 people killed each year, following Colombia, Russia and Venezuela, according to the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture.
"(The plan) is not enough to compensate for centuries of inequality that gave rise to violence," Lula said during an inauguration ceremony in the capital Brasilia. But he said it would "treat urban violence with the firm hand of the state".
High-profile murders and gang-related turf wars over the past year have raised criticism the left-leaning Lula has done too little to curb crime since first being elected in October 2002.
Some cities, such as Recife in the northeast, have homicide rates of around 80 per 100,000 people - twice as high as the most violent cities in the United States.
Lula's plan focuses mostly on improving the quality of policing, boosting social programmes and education, and building more prisons to ease overcrowding in the country's gang-infested jails.
More than 400,000 youths, including former convicts, would receive job training and financial aid through the programme.