Human Rights Watch has just released a report on conditions in Youth Detention Centers in Rio de Janeiro titled In the Dark: Hidden Abuses Against Detained Youths in Rio de Janeiro. It is a follow-up to a prior report on the subject titled Real Dungeons that was released last year. I have not yet read the new report, but the press release is disturbing:
State juvenile detention officials criticized Human Rights Watch's last report on juvenile detention in Rio de Janeiro, released in December, claiming that it contained outdated information and reflected the practices of the prior administration. Human Rights Watch's six-month review of Rio de Janeiro's juvenile detention centers found that detention conditions had actually worsened in several important respects.
Guards administer forceful open-handed blows to youths for petty infractions, such as failing to keep one's head bowed or hands behind one's back when outside the cells. Some guards also beat youths with pieces of wood, which they grotesquely nickname after cartoon characters or pop stars. Collective punishment is common.
Overcrowding is severe at three detention centers—Padre Severino, Santo Expedito and CAI-Baixada. The Santo Expedito detention center, for example, was well over its official capacity when Human Rights Watch first inspected it in July 2003. Youths are now crowded into cellblocks designed for roughly half their numbers.
Critical shortages of staffing, food, and clothing in the three centers increase the risks of violent rebellion. In March, youths at Santo Expedito rioted after authorities suspended classes, recreation and nearly all other activities at the beginning of the year due to staffing shortages. For most of the previous three months, they had spent been locked in their cells with nothing to do.
I love Brazil. I really do, but when I read things like this, when I hear a cop joking about how when he takes a handcuffed suspect to jail he likes to slam on the brakes so that he bounces against the cage and when I consider the nation's recent history, my heart aches. There is no question that Rio de Janeiro and much of Brazil have major problems with crime and gang crime in Rio in particular. Certainly some effort can be made to change the path these young men seem headed towards. For all the talk of being tough oin crime, there needs to be the realization that these individuals will not be locked up forever. Isn't it better to relese someone who hasn't been maltreated and filled with resentment and hatred toward society and authority?
Apparently São Paulo state and amazingly, Pará state believe so:
In contrast to Rio de Janeiro, the state of São Paulo now gives a mothers’ association (Associação de Mães e Amigos de Crianças e Adolescentes em Risco, AMAR) and four other groups from civil society free access—not limited to previously scheduled workshops and presentations—to all its juvenile detention centers, an important advance for the state's troubled juvenile detention system. The state of Pará guarantees representatives of nongovernmental Centers for the Defense of Children and Adolescents access to juvenile detention facilities; the Pará state constitution provides for such access to "each and every legally constituted entity connected to the defense of the child and the adolescent."
Why not Rio?
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