prisons

HRW report: Brazil’s prisons are a “human rights disaster”

VICE News

SÃO PAULO — Prisons controlled by criminal gangs rather than guards and filled with moldy and windowless cells stinking of urine and feces in which dozens of men are forced to compete for floor space on which to sleep — life for inmates in Brazil’s state of Pernambuco amounts to a “human rights disaster,” according to a new report released on Tuesday.

The report was compiled by the US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) that visited four prisons and interviewed past and current prisoners, their families, and security officials in the poverty stricken northeastern state.

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Behind bars in Brazil: Inequality reigns even in jail

Medium & BBC Brasil

CURITIBA, Paraná — Brazil oozes inequality: while some live in abject poverty, others get rich from the country’s commodities. A few, of course, get rich in ways that are less than legal. You might think that life behind bars would level out these huge differences in fortunes.

But in reality, while some rot in mouldy, dank cells without charge and given scant access even to daylight — others are given clean, fluffy pillows, regular medicals and TVs to watch.

Nowhere has this been more clearly exemplified than with the recent jailings of top executives, held over corruption and money laundering charges relating to Brazil’s biggest company.

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Brazil’s overcrowded, mismanaged prisons are at breaking point

VICE News

SÃO PAULO — Brazil’s hideously overcrowded prisons see frequent outbursts of extreme violence and murders, and are infamous for being in the stranglehold of sophisticated criminal gangs that are capable of orchestrating anything from synchronized mutinies to contract killings from inside their cells.

The country’s prison population is so vast and the authorities’ ability to contain it so stretched, the lack of security at some penitentiaries is almost surreal.

This week it emerged that inmates at a jail in Piauí, one of Brazil’s most impoverished states, are regularly slipping out to go on late-night crime sprees, robbing locals of a wish list of items banned in prison.

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Four dead in prison riot in Cascavel, Brazil

Anadolu Agency

SAO PAULO (AA) – Four inmates were killed in a prison riot in southern Brazil on Sunday, local media cited the Paraná State Prison Department as saying. 

Two of the dead are known to have been beheaded and a number of others have been injured at the facility in the city of Cascavel. The other two fatalities occurred when a number of prisoners were pushed off the roof.

At least two prison guards are still being held hostage. Some reports say one guard had been freed.

(UPDATE: Monday, 15:00 — Officials who were negotiating an end to the riot suspended work on Sunday night, but restarted efforts this morning. As of 3pm there is still no change in the situation.)

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