Reports on Police Violence and Prison Conditions in Brazil

In yet even more cheerful news from Brazil, Human Rights Watch once again put Brazil on its list for police violence.

According to NGO Human Rights Watch, an alarming number of police killings have gone unpunished in Brazil. Police officers from the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people since 2003.

Most of these killings are claimed to have been “resistance” killings — those that occur when police officers return fire in self-defense. Police officials say these killings are in resistance to gangs linked to drug trafficking.

However, Human Rights Watch says otherwise. The group led a two-year investigation, called Lethal Force, that focused on 51 such killings and found evidence that police officers often took steps to cover up the true nature of the deaths.

This should come as no surprise to people familiar with Brazil or regular readers here. The solution, according to HRW, is to appoint independent investigators and prosecutors to focus on the extrajudicial killings. That would be nice, and there have been some forays into prosecutorial action and even some newer tactics within police forces, but with the broader lack of concern about the fate of the poor in Brazil and the deep-seated impunity most police have enjoyed, nothing short of a massive and complete overhaul of the police system, structure, and workforce forced upon Rio from the federal government will accomplish an eradication of this, and that simply isn't happening for obvious logistical reasons.

Nor is that the only problem facing Brazil, in terms of policing and human rights. A British journalist had the chance to see some of the prison conditions in Brazil, and he learned firsthand that they were nothing short of appalling. In addition to the horrible crowding and understaffing, there are broader fundamental problems:

Many of the people being held have only been charged with extremely minor offences – such as shoplifting – but administrative inefficiencies in the conduct of trials means that it is not uncommon for them to spend longer on remand than their final sentence. Many should not even be there at all. The Brazilian judiciary have recently reopened the files in a number of states and found that around 20% of the people currently in prison should be released and a further 30% moved to lower security.

Locking up petty thieves with hardened killers also provides the gangs with a steady stream of new recruits. Their leaders are responsible for the day to day administration of many prisons, controlling the distribution of food, medicine, and hygiene kits and enforcing whatever internal discipline exists. Two and half years ago the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), São Paulo's most powerful crime gang, launched a series of co-ordinated attacks against police officers and prison staff in a protest over prison conditions, which resulted in around 450 killings. The PCC was initially formed by a group of prisoners to "avenge the death of 111 prisoners" who were killed during the suppression of a prison protest in 1992.

As Foley points out, this also needs major reforming, which is easy to say and hard to do. I think prison reform in Brazil has a better chance to be accomplished fairly quickly in comparison to police reform. Either way, though, in spite of Brazil's recent growth, expansion, and success in the international arena, it is still very difficult to be either poor or a criminal in Brazil, and there is little hope that the basic structural situation facing those groups is going to improve anytime soon.

Chile, Panama Lead Latin America in Incarceration Rates; Brazil Still Has Highest Total Number

While not as high as the U.S., a recent study has shown that Chile and Panama have the highest rates of imprisoned among their populations, with rates of 310 and 275 per 100,000, respectively. And I admit, I was somewhat surprised - I had expected Brazil to be higher (though it is fifth, with 226 per 100,000, behind El Salvador and Uruguay). On the other end of the spectrum, Bolivia has the lowest rates (85 per 100,000), followed by Guatemala (88), Paraguay (100), Ecuador (118), and Nicaragua (120).

Of course, extrapolating that data to actual population stats, Brazil's prison population is quantitatively higher than any other country in Latin America. What's more, statistics don't reveal the appalling conditions of Brazilian prisons (or elsewhere - I can't help but think that, with overcrowding going well above 120%, Panamanian prisons are also in bad shape). The report also makes several other observations that should be common sense, but still need to be said: that the crime rates are due to socio-economic factors like wide gaps between wealthy and poor, and not to a breakdown in societal morals; or that the death penalty (used in Guatemala and the U.S.) does not deter violent crime. I don't know if this report will accomplish any real change, but it does highlight the problems facing many countries in how to deal with crime, the appalling conditions many prisoners are facing, and the need to push hard for basic human rights for prisoners, too, no matter how heinous the crime.

Lots Going on in Latin America

In trying to catch up with what had happened in Latin America in the 5 days I was without internet, I quickly discovered that there was lots going on, and I don't have time to go into each item and comment in detail. Still, these stories from last week are well worth checking out, with a major tip of the hat to the good folks at the Latin Americanist, Boz, and frequent commenter Randy.

-I agree with Boz - while many people ignored and even laughed at Lula's suggestion for a South American Defense Council in February, the Ecuador/Colombia events gave Lula's proposal sudden prescience. The one thing I will add here is that the fact that sucha good idea came from Brazil prior to these events does not surprise me - while he has numerous (and usually irrational) detractors in Brazil, from a purely objective standpoint I find Lula to be one of the most intelligent and downright sensible presidents, particuarly in foreign policy, that I've ever seen or studied, in Brazil and elsewhere. This offers just one more example of that sensibility and leadership.

-In the wake of the imprisonment and probably torture and rape of a 15-year-old girl in Brazil last year, it seems the prisons are at it again, with a 12-year-old girl being kept near male inmates in a prison in Mato Grosso do Sul. As the Latin Americanist points out, this is now the third such incident in fewer than 4 months. There are many areas in which Brazil's prison system is appalling, but this is just a totally new and inexcusable level of abuse.

-Japan wants Peru to give former Peruvian president (and Japanese citizen) Alberto Fujimori a fair trial. The way to guarantee this trial is fair is to see Fujimori jailed for human rights abuses during his administration. I don't care if he fought against the rebel Shining Path successfully and brought "economic success" to Peru (though I'm always leery of those who have nostalgia for the way things were in the 90s in Latin America - the 90s generally tended to be unfair beneficiaries of appalling neo-liberal policies); the fact that he also oversaw military and even paramilitary forces that killed innocent civilians as well as members of the Shining Path should result in jail time and disgrace.

-Rodolfo Eduardo Almiron Sena, a high-ranking member of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA), a paramilitary right-wing group that participated in the murder of leftists and "subversives" prior to and during Argentina's Dirty War, was extradited from Spain to Argentina to face trial. Sena fled prior to the Dirty War, but the AAA had already participated in hundreds of random killings prior to 1976, so here's hoping he meets the same fate as various members of the military, the Church, and others who also aided in human rights violations in Argentina.

-And finally, in my absence, Randy was on a roll, with great analysis and comments on cocaine production arriving to Brazil's Amazon (on which I may have further thoughts later), why we should ignore the crocodile tears of Baby Doc Duvalier, in exile in France, and the polyglot nature of Suriname, which is indeed one of the "forgotten 3" of Latin America (along with French Guyana and Guyana - a friend and I always joked that he would be the first "French Guayanist" scholar, and I the first "Surinamist," in Latin American History.

More on Jails and Police Impunity in Brazil

I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but the NY Times has finally gotten around to putting up an article that actually has some extra info not available the first time the story made its way into the North American media. For those who missed this the first time around, a 15-year-old girl was accused of petty theft, and ended up in a prison with grown men, where for almost 4 weeks, she was tortured and raped, sometimes in exchange for food, sometimes for no reason, by her male cellmates. Police not only ignored her screams for help, they shaved her head to make her look like a boy and now, in one of the worst "defenses" for any event ever, are saying it's not their fault because she has lied about being only 13.

I've written often about the horrible police system that employs murder and torture with impunity in Brazil often, but usually in the context of favelas in Rio (see here, here, and here, for example). However, it should be clear that the problem with police in Brazil is not a Rio-only or favela-only issue. They have employed torture against prisoners (particularly the darker-skinned and poorer) since at least the late-19th century (and that doesn't include slavery, which was only abolished in 1888 but which has undoubtedly had a direct social role on the presence of torture to this date). Prisoners' rights are thrown out the window in a double-standard system in which the wealthy and well-off can serve their time without ever actually going to jail (and that's only IF they are brought to trial, which in itself is extremeley rare) while the poor languish in overcrowded prisons, subject to gang violence, police violence, torture, and inhumane conditions.

And the police continue to act with impunity across the country. In this particular case, the girl and her family have been forced to relocate under a federal witness protection agency due to death threats they have received from the police, who have threatened to kill members of her family if the family doesn't "admit" the girl is 19 or 20. Indeed, when the story first broke, her father said he was told he would be killed if he didn't get the document "proving" her age to be 19 or 20, to which he said (via the media), "How can I give them a document that doesn't exist?" And the worst part in all of this is, while I have no doubt the federal government is sincere in its concern over this case and its broader implications for Brazil's prison system, the atrocities are so deep and so long-standing and institutionalized that I just really don't see any changes coming in a long time, if ever.