Translator: Guillermo Sobral Reviewer: Claudia Sander
There are no walls or fences high enough to isolate people.
There are no walls or fences capable of separating free society
from locked-up society in correctional facilities and prisons.
Even though society feels a bit safer each time the police make an arrest,
even though society feels a bit safer with each sentence a judge imposes,
what happens is exactly the opposite.
Exactly the opposite.
The more people we throw into jail,
the higher the crime rates are.
I've been working in this field for 30 years now.
I had never been imprisoned,
but one of the greatest compliment I've ever received
for studying and researching this subject
was from a state governor.
A collective interview was summoned,
many journalists were there,
and I was sitting right beside him, at the very head of the table,
and there were the governor and the secretary of justice
talking about the penitentiary system.
As the secretary started to present data, I replied.
He continued presenting data and I continued replying,
and so on.
The fifth time around, the governor couldn't stand it.
He looked at me and said,
"I see you know everything about the prison system.
Have you experienced it yourself?"
It was a joke, but I took it as a compliment.
It's a difficult topic.
But, in order to speak about the prison system as a whole,
I see no better example than the Central Prison of Porto Alegre.
An Investigation Commission catalogued it as the worst prison in Brazil.
It is often the object of...
reports from the OAS
in the matters of human rights violations.
And it also happens to be the biggest prison in Brazil,
because no other facility destined for provisional prisoners
holds almost 5,000 inmates, as the Central Prison does.
Provisional prisoners are those awaiting sentencing,
who are there in preventive grounds or because they were caught red-handed.
And those almost 5,000 inmates
occupy a space
where 1,900 inmates, at most, would fit.
An average of 2.5 inmates per vacancy.
In a scenario like that, it's natural that problems occur in the prison,
starting by structural ones.
There is a prison wing with 400 inmates and 3 bathrooms.
That is, 3 bathrooms for 400 inmates.
Thus, besides the biological control these inmates have to have,
they also have to handle structural problems
like sewers clogging.
There are too many people there, and very few bathrooms for them.
So, pipes from all bathrooms clogged up,
all the wings experienced the same thing.
To soften this problem,
the inmates removed the external sewage pipes.
With that, every time somebody flushes the toilet upstairs,
a waterfall pours down onto the patio they themselves occupy
as well as their families on visiting days.
It's just logical to assume that this causes other problems,
including health-related issues.
But this overpopulation causes effects on the internal structure as well,
and to avoid having cells with capacity for eight inmates
sheltering something between 30 to 40 inmates,
the solution the state found was to remove the doors from the cells,
so the inmates
may occupy the corridors in these wings as well.
Therefore, we don't have inmates held in cells.
We have inmates held in wings.
Even the corridors became dorms.
It's a wing with 400 inmates circulating freely among the corridors,
and the state cannot get into it.
Not even the guards go into these wings when the inmates are there.
They are afraid of rioting, of retaliation.
And where the state does not intervene, especially inside a prison facility,
crime evolves quickly, obviously.
And the state is not there to guarantee that the inmates serve their time.
So, criminality evolves.
And in which ways does it evolve?
Through criminal gangs, through criminal organizations.
In the Central Prison of Porto Alegre,
wings are divided between gangs,
and that happens in all big prisons in Brazil.
Inmates are divided between gangs.
They are not divided because of the crime they committed,
nor between first-time offenders or recidivists, no.
They are divided between gangs;
with help from the state.
And since the state fails to get into there
and it doesn't have the means to speak to 400 inmates at the same time,
each wing picks a leader.
"Wing orderly," in the state's words,
"mayor," in prison slang.
And, obviously, in a wing dominated by a gang,
that leader will belong to the gang.
That's just obvious.
And if it isn't him, it'll be a John Doe designated by him.
But the state not only remains silent towards this whole story.
It contributes to the growth of the gangs.
Because, when somebody is arrested in the street and taken to the facility,
the first question he gets asked is:
"Are you a member of any gang?"
If he belongs to a gang,
he will be catalogued and assigned a wing accordingly.
That is, the state is helping these gangs to become more organized,
"Here is one more of you."
And if he doesn't belong to any gang, if he was just a kid stealing a car,
or breaking any other law, whilst not being linked to any gang,
he, still, will be assigned to a gang wing.
He'll be randomly thrown into any wing.
Upon his arrival,
he'll have nothing, since the state doesn't provide a mattress, toilet paper,
or any hygienic items for that matter, the state doesn't provide anything.
He'll arrive empty-handed, but he'll be gladly taken in.
There, the gang leader will host him,
"You can come safely, we support each other here,
we're all brothers.
We all support each other."
He'll arrive and he'll be welcome.
He'll get a mattress, or maybe,
he'll have to share a mattress with another inmate.
But he'll get a bar of soap so he can take a shower,
he'll get toilet paper, he'll get all the essentials
for survival inside the prison.
But everything comes at a price.
Obviously, gangs are not naturally good.
Obviously, gangs are not philanthropic organizations.
Gangs are criminal organizations.
And the first time he gets a visitor, the gang leader will tell him,
"Hey, guy, we are collaborating,
but you need to chip in as well for the gang, to help others and so on.
And he will say, "Your family member needs to bring some cash in."
"But he has no money."
"So then do the following, try and see if he can bring some drugs in."
He will have to collaborate, in some way.
Drugs, something for the wing, etc.
Let's say this inmate has no visitors or the visitor has no ways to get things in.
The gang won't walk out on him.
"You are here now, no problem.
Stick around. We'll help you out."
As we know, there is no life sentence in Brazil.
One day, that inmate is going to get out.
Then, he'll pay that bill from the outside.
How is he going to pay the bill?
Inside the prision, there are numerous cell phones
and the cell phone reception is great.
Even better than in some places outside.
I have tested the cell phone reception inside.
It's marvelous.
It catches on better than anywhere else.
So the leader will phone him and tell him,
"Boy, it's time for you to pay your bill.
Go out and steal. We need two cars per week."
And this is what I say, the matter of separating free from confined society.
So we're here.
Here in this university, I know there were serious problems not so long ago,
regarding car theft, student robbery.
Anyone of us, standing at a corner,
somebody can walk up to us and hold a gun to our heads,
"Hand me the car. It's gone, it's gone, hand me the car."
Many times, we fail to realize it.
Murders.
And there are murders not only between criminals
and they are also not only by stray bullets.
We see many innocent people being killed in this drug war
without being involved with it.
Bank, business, home robberies.
That's what I say, many times we don't realize it,
but the free society pays a hefty bill
because of the lack of regulation by the state inside prisons.
We are left here believing that the more people being sent to prison,
the less people committing crimes outside.
But it's been a long time since prisons
actually prevented somebody from committing a crime.
They might not commit it directly,
but they have several soldiers on the streets to do that,
many soldiers to commit crimes outside.
There are several gangs both inside and outside prisons,
because they are only growing
with that help from the state, which provides them with new members
and allows them to dominate the insides of prisons.
Hence, crime seems to be much more organized than the very state
in several aspects.
I'm not here preaching -
I'm no crazy man to preach for abolitionism, saying,
"No. They don't have to be arrested."
Of course, it's nothing like that. I'm not saying that.
Prisons are a necessary evil in imperfect societies such as ours.
But I'm questioning the type of incarceration done here in Brazil.
Firstly, because in law -
I studied part of the Law degree,
but enough to learn something, and one of the first lessons I had
was that criminal law is the last stage of law.
Imprisonment is the last stage of the criminal law.
When every other one fails, we appeal to this one.
There are several other ways of coming to terms in law
before getting to criminal law.
But, when this is impossible, we look towards criminal law.
And the same thing should be done with incarceration:
it should be the last resource.
We should go over the alternative punishments;
there is community service,
where the infractor someway pays back
to society for his wrongdoing
He would be really paying.
He wouldn't only be punished, but he would be paying.
Of course, this applies to misdemeanors, not to heavy crimes.
Mugging at gunpoint, evidently, puts society at risk,
by putting a gun to somebody's head,
one day he'll kill somebody.
But what we see in Brazil today, and perhaps it's because of this
that Brazil today has one of the biggest prison populations in the world,
what we see is mass incarceration,
mainly with the 2006 drugs law.
The drugs law is overcrowding prison facilities with young people,
mainly people between 18 and 25 years old, from the periphery,
and mostly black.
By the way, this is the profile society has made of drug dealers.
When you think of a drug dealer, what comes to mind?
A black, low-income, young male.
I had the chance to know the story of some of these black young males
or maybe not even black, but low-income young males.
Most of them, almost all of them, are functional illiterates,
living in already casted out communities,
with no perspective in life,
and whose communities are dominated by big shot drug dealers.
"Big shot," allegedly, but they sure are powerful dealers
that walk around with a gun in their hips,
who, in this sexist society, gets all the girls from the region,
that ride cars,
nice cars, they wear gold chains,
and they serve as an example to all these illiterate youngsters.
It's the example they have. It's the perspective they have.
And many of them know they'll die soon, but say,
"I'll live fast as long as I can."
That is the vision they have.
And also because, let's be honest:
we ourselves discriminate them.
If we see a youngster with worn-out clothes, we think,
"Is he going to mug me?"
We ourselves contribute to isolate, in a certain way,
not providing visibility for this youngster.
And the visibility he gets,
the way he finds to make people foresee him,
is by wandering around with a gun or selling drugs to the middle class.
He feels important.
He feels like he is somebody
and that that is a job.
In a society like ours,
a neo-liberal society, with a huge social gap,
a terrible income distribution,
the state usually compensates its absence
both as an economic and social state
by reinforcing the penal state.
Not much is invested in education in poor neighborhoods, mainly,
but much is invested in police force;
in police force, to keep filling up prisons,
in which the state so poorly invests.
Of course, some prisons are positive examples,
I think this is salutary.
We must say that we have some positive examples,
very few, but we do have.
Like here in Canoas.
In Canoas we have a facility that today can be considered a model.
For now, as long as it's not modified.
Each inmate that enters there receives a kit.
That kit has a uniform,
and the items he needs for personal hygiene.
Those inmates in Canoas,
they work, they study,
something that is really rare in other facilities, like in Central.
It's just that these inmates cost 2,500 reais monthly to the state,
without taking into account the money for prison staff salaries.
For the Central, the cost is approximately 1,000 reais per month.
You might say, "It's really expensive, to pay 2,500 reais per inmate."
But if you look at the rate of recidivism in Canoas,
it fluctuates between 9 and 18 percent.
In Central the rate of recidivism is 70 percent.
For every ten inmates on their way out, seven of them come back,
often for comitting crimes worse than their previous ones.
Why? Because they are controlled by gangs.
I tend to touch this difficult topic.
I receive many critiques on social media.
Often times people think I'm defending prisoners, so they say,
"You feel pity? Adopt him, take him home."
If I had adopted everyone I was told to,
I'd have more prisoners at home than in the Central, truly.
But, I invite you to think.
This is an important issue,
because there are no walls or fences
huge enough to separate free society from confined society.
(Applause)