At the beginning of this year, multiple gruesome prison riots have caused the deaths of over 100 prisoners in Brazil. In Manaus, 56 prisoners died in a riot at the Anísio Jobim Prison Complex and 33 prisoners were killed in the Monte Cristo Agricultural Penitentiary in Boa Vista. On January 16, another 26 inmates were murdered in a riot at Alcacuz prison in the city of Natal. Rather than being safe and secure places for potential rehabilitation, these institutions have become hotbeds for crime, murder and severe human rights violations.
In addition to facing intense overcrowding, squalid conditions and inadequate nutrition, prisoners (many of whom have not even faced trial yet) are often at risk of extreme violence perpetuated by criminal gangs. The impetus for Brazil’s latest wave of violence came from the June 2016 breakdown of a two-decade truce between two main criminal organizations: the First Capital Command (PCC) from Sao Paulo and the Red Command from Rio de Janeiro. As a result of the murder of alleged drug trafficker Jorge Rafaat along the border with Paraguay, a war emerged between the cartels that control the trafficking routes in the north and west of the country. In the midst of this conflict for territorial control, the PCC disseminated an order to murder all Red Command members who were in the country’s prisons—and the government has been unable to control the catastrophic result.
In prisons in Mexico and Guatemala, authorities have been unable to keep disputes between gangs outside of prisons.
