A journey into hell; Prisons in Latin America  

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Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine
Dalam koleksi: The Economist (http://search.proquest.com/) vol. 404 no. 8803 (Sep. 2012), page 45-48.
Topik: Human Rights; Prisons; Prison Overcrowding; Politics; Criminals; Gangs

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Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE29.73 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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On August 28th six members of the local Human Rights Council, an official watchdog, turned up at Romeu Goncalves de Abrantes prison in Joao Pessoa, the capital of the state of Paraiba in Brazil's poor north-east. Inside they found filthy, overcrowded cells holding sick, thirsty prisoners, some with untreated injuries. The prison guards refused to open the door of the locked punishment wing, which reeked of vomit and faeces. So the visitors passed a camera in through a ventilation shaft. It came back with images of naked prisoners crowded into bare, unlit cells. Though the guards said the inmates were being held like this "temporarily" because of a planned jailbreak, they had been there for four days. The guards demanded the camera be handed over. When the council members refused, all six were detained. They were held for three hours before other state officials turned up and freed them. Such conditions are closer to the rule than the exception in Latin America's jails. Compared with other parts of the world, the region locks up a larger--and rising--percentage of its population, though less than the United States. But few Latin American prisons fulfil their basic functions of punishing and rehabilitating criminals. Not only are prisoners frequently subjected to brutal treatment in conditions of mass overcrowding and extraordinary squalor, but many jails are also themselves run by criminal gangs.

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