SAO PAULO, Brazil — Support for the death penalty has reached its highest rate in 14 years after waves of violence and brutal crimes across Latin America's largest nation, according to a survey released Sunday.Fifty-five percent of Brazilians support instituting the death penalty, which does not exist in Brazil, according to the Datafolha survey published in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, Brazil's largest.

That matches the rate reached in 1993, Datafolha said. The lowest rate was 48 percent in 2000. The polling institute's first survey on the issue was in 1991.

Datafolha said it interviewed 5,700 people across Brazil on March 19-20, and the survey had a margin of error of two percentage points.

During the last survey in August 2006, 51 percent of Brazilians favoured the death penalty.

In December, a wave of violence in Rio de Janeiro left 19 people dead, including eight who were burned alive aboard a city bus.

One killing in particular has prompted widespread outrage: In February, five men and teenagers stole a car in Rio and dragged to death a six-year-old boy who got stuck in his seat belt while trying to escape.

That same month three French citizens who worked at a non-profit group in Rio de Janeiro were stabbed to death.

In Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo, more than 200 people were killed in May when a prison-based gang unleashed a wave of attacks against police and other symbols of government authority.

Other recent surveys have shown Brazilians' biggest concerns have switched from jobless rates to security.

Killings by police and vigilante-style groups called militias also may be heightening attention to security.

In Rio, the militias have been expelling heavily armed drug gangs who control many slums, eliminating the drug business but charging residents for protection.