Brazil's Prisons: a blind spot in public security

It is an illusion to imagine that lengthier sentencing and building more penitentiaries will garantee greater security for the population, according to Elizabeth Sussekind a long-time analyst of Brazil's correction system.

Speaking at a seminar at Brazil's prestigious Casa Rui Barbosa Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, the researcher said that despite the nation's overcrowded prisons, a mere 3% of criminals are behind bars. Not that, in her view, violence could be controlled through the prison system.

"The only way to address criminality adequately is by preventing it. That is, through education, inside families, by instilling values, and fostering a culture that will lead people away from offending", said the researcher. According to Sussekind, even knowing full well they will die, youths make it clear that they commit crimes to be able to "eat meat every day" and "get lots of girls pregnant", as a way to boost their status in the community.

Sussekind who was National Justice Secretary from 1999 to 2002, believes that penitentiaries are an important if distorted mirror of public security. "That is what we think public security amounts to: prisons. But criminality is not mirrored in prisons, but hidden away in society. The more prisons are overcrowded, the greater our illusion that criminals are in it, when in fact 97% of offenders are amongst us," Sussekind explains.

The issue is aggravated by the fact that penitentiariers fail to live up to their stated goal, in other words, ressocialization. According to the researcher, recidivism is the trend. Prison is further "a place for offending" due to the state's lack of oversight and resulting inefficiency.

High cost and low quality

According to Sussekind, each detainee costs the state approximately 660 Reals (330 US Dollars) but they are left without any professional training, education nor are they garanteed any degree of personal safety. Some of Brazil's 12 agricultural penal colonies fail even to cultivate plants.

"Penitentiaries in Brazil are the no man's lands, the state refuses responsibility over them. The budget for the corrections system is negligible. Penitentiary agents are paid the lowest salaries in public security and are not even part of law enforcement," said Sussekind.

Four fold increase in prison population since the '70s

 
The PUC-RJ professor added that she has not seen any significant progress in the prison system over the past 30 years, and that all penitentiaries suffer from the same failings. Whenever qualified professionals such as doctors, lawyers and social workers approach the prison system with a mind to do good work they are forced by the state into demeaning work conditions.

The only change Sussekind sees is in the numbers of detainees and their social origins. In the early 70s there were just over 7 thousand detainees in Rio prisons, while today they number close to 30 thousand, and the current administration argues that it has a deficit of one thousand places. There are almost 420 thousand detainees in Brazil, of which 10 to 15% of those sentenced are fugitives or escapees.

As to their social origins, Sussekind who is also a lawyer and heads the Law Research sector at the Casa Rui Barbosa Foundation and PUC-Rio professor, points out that they are much poorer and in ever greater numbers, of African descent, which points to the issue of criminalizing poverty, once crimes are committed by people of all classes and ethnicities.

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Translated by Lis Horta Moriconi