Brazil proposes prisons overhaul after massacre

MANAUS, Brazil: Brazil’s justice minister has proposed an overhaul of the penal system to tackle chronic prison overcrowding a day after 56 inmates were massacred in the deadliest riot in two decades.

The minister, Alexandre de Moraes, said Brazil needed to improve conditions in jails, which are home to an estimated 600,000 inmates, after visiting the prison in the jungle city of Manaus where violence erupted between rival drug gangs.

In an incident that shocked even Brazilians inured to regular outbreaks of prison violence, machete-wielding gangs decapitated inmates on Monday and threw their bodies over a wall of the penitentiary, which houses more than three times its capacity.

Moraes said the solution to Brazil’s chronic prison violence was not just to keep opening new prisons.

“We need to make sure those who deserve to be in jail stay there and those who committed minor crimes get out,” Moraes told reporters after visiting the Anisio Jobim penitentiary. “If not, we are only providing organised crime groups with new soldiers.”

The minister said 42 per cent of inmates in Brazil’s prisons were awaiting trial, versus a global average of just 20 per cent. The prison system is among the worst in the world, according to human rights groups. Overcrowding and violence are common, and rights groups describe medieval conditions with food scarce and cells so packed that prisoners have no space to lie down.

Brazil’s federal government will provide 1.2 billion reais ($367.82 million) to states by June to beef up security and buy more X-ray machines to prevent weapons from entering prisons, Moraes said. — Reuters