Brazil's prisons are overcrowded, unsanitary, violent and constitute a "human-rights disaster," a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has revealed.
The 31-page report, that was published on Monday and titled "'The State Let Evil Take Over': The Prison Crisis in the Brazilian State of Pernambuco," revealed the poor conditions inside four of Brazil's prisons. HRW visited four institutions in Pernambuco, a region in the northeast that is notorious for its prisons being overcrowded and underfunded. The organisation interviewed 40 current and former inmates, as well as their relatives, prison authorities, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and police officers.
"Overcrowding is a major problem in Brazil's prisons and nowhere else it is more severe than in Pernambuco," Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at HRW said. "The state has packed tens of thousands of people into cell blocks designed for a third as many people, and turned over the keys to inmates who use violence and intimidation to run the prison grounds as personal fiefdoms."
HRW found that the prisons they visited were grossly overcrowded. According to official records, in August 2015, the Iguarassu prison housed 3,788 inmates, despite its official capacity being 507. HRW Brazil researcher, César Muñoz describes how in one prison he found "a windowless cell without beds, in which 37 men slept on sheets on the floor. Another, which had six cement bunks for 60 men, lacked even enough floor space." Prison directors told HRW that, in at least two prisons, authorities count some makeshift bunks built by detainees as official beds.
Despite Brazil's Justice Ministry considering it appropriate to have one guard for every five prisoners, the HRW report said that in one prison in Pernambuco—a semi-open facility where some of the 2,300 inmates are allowed to come and go for work—only four guards were on duty during each shift. This has pushed officials and guards to essentially handover control to "keyholders"—inmates who run drug and extortion rings from within the prison, in some cases forcing their fellow cellmates to pay in order to be allowed a place to sleep.
According to the Brazil's National Prison Department, data shows that inmates in Pernambuco's prisons are 42 times more at risk to HIV than that of the general Brazilian population, while the prevalence of tuberculosis is 100 times that of the general population. The report also highlights the fact that there are only 161 health professionals to care for almost 31,000 prisoners in Pernambuco. Often inmates are not given medical testing on arrival at the prisons, and many contract illness from the lack of sanitation, space and ventilation. "Overcrowding makes it impossible to eliminate the disease," Carlos Cordeiro, director of the Itamaracá prison told HRW.
Across the prison system, 59 percent of detainees are awaiting trial. These inmates are incarcerated side-by-side with convicted prisoners, which is a violation of international and Brazilian law. The HRW found that there are severe delays to custody hearings that help prevent unlawful arbitrary imprisonment. "Brazil´s Congress should approve a pending bill that mandates custody hearings throughout the country," the organisation suggest.
The HRW conclude that authorities in Pernambuco must take "urgent steps to address extreme overcrowding and inhumane conditions, stop delegating control of prison facilities to keyholders and address severe delays in the judicial process."
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