Translator: David DeRuwe
Why?
Why do we arrest people?
Why do we have prisons in the world?
There are 11 million imprisoned people in the world,
according to the US Institute of Criminal Policy.
There are 700,000 imprisoned people in Brazil,
according to the Brazilian Yearbook of Public Security.
Do you know how much the State spends on each prisoner -
my money, your money, collected in taxes?
The Brazilian average is R$ 3000.
That’s it.
According to CNJ, each prisoner consumes about US$ 500 per month.
In public-private partnerships, this expense can reach up to R$ 5000.
Federal prisons already spend R$ 35,000 per month on each prisoner.
So much money invested. Is this investment really useful?
After all, why do we arrest people?
Basically, there are three main reasons:
The first is to discourage people from committing crimes.
We call this prevention.
In theory, someone with fear of punishment stops committing a crime.
I say in theory because, in Brazil,
we have a preexisting and more serious problem:
impunity.
Less than 10% of our 50,000 annual homicides are solved.
The victims, always forgotten, don’t even report the facts to the police.
They don’t have any hope for an investigation.
We invest R$ 37 billion every year in public safety,
but the criminals keep committing crimes, because they’re sure of one thing:
they’ll never be discovered.
The second reason we arrest people is more practical:
It’s a form of punishment.
The taking of liberty is a penalty
that makes it impossible for the subject to commit new crimes.
But again, this is only in theory,
because anyone who knows the recent history of criminal groups
tied to the Latin American drug trade over the past 50 years
knows that almost all of this trade initiates within prison facilities.
The third reason is, in my opinion, the most important:
the protection of society.
We do this by taking in a criminal
and returning a citizen who will no longer commit crimes.
It’s what is called the resocializing goal of punishment,
and it’s precisely here that we seem to have failed even more.
Out of every 10 prisoners in Brazil, seven return to commit crimes.
According to IPEA, the recidivism rate is between 50% and 70%,
which, alone, is a serious alert that we are making grave mistakes.
While on the one hand, it’s true that we need to keep imprisoning people
because we haven’t found another civilized way to react to crime,
it’s also true that isolating a person for years in a cell and letting them out
doesn’t resolve the problem.
It seems like we’re recreating a cycle of violence and chaos.
Let’s definitely talk about how we implement the prison sentence.
My idea
is that the penalty will only achieve its ends and protect society
if it is implemented by society, not by the State.
There’s no way to live in society without actually living together.
We need to overcome our prejudices,
and enter in the prison hallways to teach those men and women
how to live in freedom.
I’ve been a prosecutor in Minas Gerais for over 17 years,
and I’ve always worked in criminal enforcement.
I worked three years in Brasilia at the National Council of Public Prosecutors,
inspecting dozens of prison units all over Brazil.
Today, I work in a city called Ribeirão das Neves,
the biggest center of prisons in my state.
Eight prisons, 9,000 prisoners.
I inspected each prison every month -
I did this for years, and I’m more than convinced
that our model doesn’t protect society.
In 2014, we had a problem outside the walls.
Twenty people were murdered every year in front of one prison.
No police action would placate the wars between the criminal factions.
I thought: “How can civil society find a way to resolve this problem?”
My colleague and I went to several businessmen
to talk about the advantages of hiring prison labor.
We seem to have convinced them, and they hired more than 1000 prisoners.
Dozens of buses entered in the morning.
They gave them a uniform, food, training, a salary, and returned them at night.
Beyond the benefits of work, the result was zero.
That’s right - no deaths the following year.
Encouraging work and study,
opportunities for professionalization in the prison environment,
is already a step in the right direction.
But as Einstein said:
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
And some people were serious about this imagination.
What if the sentence was carried out by the prisoners themselves
with the help of society?
In 2018, we invited four state governors
to learn about a non-profit entity
that builds prisons and monitors sentences in the city of Santa Luzia, Minas Gerais.
They came.
What pageantry!
Cars full of assessors.
A military escort.
When I told them that no escort or arms would be needed to enter the prison,
they responded by laughing.
Nobody even believed what I said, but their surprise was immediate.
It was a prisoner who opened the prison gate,
and the scene was one of beauty, not repulsion.
The floors and walls were painted and clean.
The beds and cells were perfectly organized.
There were flowers in the garden.
They moved freely in the middle of 200 prisoners for more than two hours.
But then, suspicious, one of the governors called me aside and said,
“Henrique, what’s the catch? There has to be a secret.
This can’t exist! It has to be fake!
You did something to this, I’m sure.”
I said: “No Governor, this is real. It’s a real prison with real criminals”
“I don’t believe it. I know ...
you selected all wonderful prisoners with short sentences and put them here.
This is all an act.”
“How about this then, Governor?
Choose any random prisoner, call him aside here and ask:
‘What’s your crime and what’s your sentence.’”
He took the challenge, looked through the crowd,
called a prisoner aside, and asked: “What’s your crime; what’s your sentence?”
That short, serious man, about 40 years old,
lowered his head - maybe for shame or maybe for talking with a governor.
He responded: “Governor, I destroyed families and robbed banks.
I received a 300-year sentence for my crimes.”
Put that man in a cell for as long as you like.
You choose the time - however much time you like -
and I guarantee you that when you open his cell,
he will come out worse than when he entered.
It’s time to get rid of the utopian idea
that public power and prisons will solve all our public safety problems.
We, civil society,
are responsible for building the future we want to live in and leave our children.
This Association for the Protection and Assistance of Convicts - APAC,
isn’t anyhing new.
It has existed for 50 years,
and it administers 64 prisons in seven states, with 7,000 prisoners,
and it functions in 12 countries, including Mexico, Chile, and Paraguay.
Breakouts are rare, and recidivism is minimal.
Recent studies by the Minas Gerais Court of Justice
point out that only one in ten prisoners who serve time in an APAC
go back to delinquency.
The recidivism rates for women prisoners approach zero.
And responding to that governor’s “What is the secret?”
It’s the participation of society.
It’s volunteerism.
It’s a ton of people in health, education, assistance, psychology, and safety,
who help maintain these prisoners for 14 hours each day
in a process that transforms them from criminals into citizens.
There is no need to make alterations in the laws of Brazil;
volunteering and organizing civil society are enough.
I know
there are several laudable work and study projects in the prison environment,
but perhaps APAC has taken this to its ultimate end.
And, answering the question everyone wants to know:
the monthly cost is US$ 200 per prisoner.
The Mandela rules, created in 1955,
and named for the great Nobel Peace Prize winner, Nelson Mandela,
were organized in 2015 by the UN
and constitute the most fundamental normative framework
to guide member countries in structuring their prison systems
and in the treatment of prisoners.
Rules 4, 87, 88, and 90 say exactly that.
In summary: the penalty will only fulfill its purpose of protecting society
if we teach prisoners to live in freedom.
And you?
Have you ever thought of teaching a prisoner how to live in freedom?
Thank you.
(Applause)