Report on Prisons in Latin America

Economist.com report on prisons in Latin America… Far from being secure places of rehabilitation, too many of the region’s jails are violent incubators of crime. But there are some signs of change..ON AUGUST 28th six members of the local Human Rights Council, an official watchdog, turned up at Romeu Gonçalves de Abrantes prison in João Pessoa, the capital of the state of Paraíba 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. Read Article