MACEIO, Brazil, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- A string of prison riots across Brazil on Monday, which left at least 15 inmates dead, became the latest in a series of incidents that turned the spotlight on Brazil's failing penal system.
The riots, which lasted two days, were said to be masterminded by the First Commando of the Capital, or PCC, one of Brazil's largest criminal gangs, which also claimed responsibility for two grenade attacks Monday that left a woman slightly injured.
At the site of one of the grenade attacks, a banner was left bearing the message: "If the mistreatment of prisoners does not stop, the attacks will continue."
Inmates at a prison in Sao Paulo appeared at the windows, their faces heavily disguised by clothing, and they hung bed sheets bearing the slogan of the PCC, "Peace, Justice and Liberty."
Nagashi Furukawa, the secretary of the Penitentiary Administration of Sao Paulo, said the latest killings were a result of disputes between rival gangs.
"With 65,000 prisoners in the state (of Sao Paulo), I don't consider the situation to be too grave," he said.
These latest disturbances come exactly a year after Brazil saw a nationwide uprising in its prisons, also organized by the PCC, which came to be known as the "mega-rebellion" in which 19 prisoners were killed and several injured. PCC leaders used cell phones to spread the rebellion to jails across the country.
Following Monday's riots, Federal Judge Rita Stevenson on Tuesday ordered the National Agency of Telecommunications, Anatel, to install mobile phone blockers in prisons throughout the country within the next 120 days.
These latest riots highlight the desperate state of Brazil's prisons, which human rights organizations have frequently described as inhuman. Chronic overcrowding, corruption and insufficient state funding are a lethal mix that result in squalid conditions leading to riots and killings. In many state prisons, the ratio of prison guards to prisoners is so disproportionate that authorities readily admit they have lost control of certain areas.
Instead, an elite of powerful and well-connected inmates runs these "no-go" areas.
"Massive overcrowding, poor health provisions and pitiful opportunities for rehabilitation have allowed for a culture of violence to proliferate," said Tim Cahill, researcher on Brazil for human-rights group Amnesty International. "It is time for the Brazilian authorities to confront the fundamental problems that exist in the heart of its criminal justice system."
In a study conducted last year by Amnesty International, it was revealed that fellow prisoners were responsible for more than 80 percent of deaths of prisoners in custody.
Already this year, Brazil has seen several uprisings with the worst occurring in a maximum-security prison in the northern state of Rondonia after an escape attempt was foiled. Frustrated rival gangs battled it out with knives, metal bars and guns, which had been previously smuggled in, leaving more than 30 inmates dead.
In a separate incident last month, a 22-year-old prisoner was found dead in a Sao Paulo prison under suspicious circumstances. His crime was to kidnap the daughter of a well-known TV magnate last August that involved the killing of two police investigators, leading to claims by his lawyer that he was "marked to die" while in detention. Although a further autopsy of the kidnapper was ordered and no foul play detected, the question on most Brazilians' lips remains: "Who did it?"
Latin America's largest and most notorious prison, Carandiru, in the state of Sao Paulo, saw Brazil's worst prison massacre in October 1992 when Col. Ubiratan Guimaraes ordered special units to storm the prison. It resulted in the killing of 111 inmates, many of them shot execution-style.
In June last year, Guimaraes was sentenced to 632 years, though under Brazilian law he will serve a maximum of 30 years.
It was this uprising that led to the formation of the PCC by survivors of the brutal rebellion.
Carandiru, which was built to accommodate 3,600 but houses more than 7,000, has the worst overcrowding problem of all Brazil's prisons. According to Human Rights Watch, in some cells and dormitories, prisoners are tied to window bars to maximize the floor space while others are forced to sleep over hole-in-the-ground toilets. In a place where infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV are rife, chronic overcrowding exacerbates the problem.
In 1998, the state government of Sao Paulo announced plans to close Carandiru prison with the date for demolition now set for April 21. In December, the first 180 inmates of the current 7,500 were moved to prisons in the interior of Sao Paulo. With the transfer of prisoners comes the hope that the conditions of their confinement will improve.
