Brazzil

They were practically unknown from people outside the jail system until they staged the largest rebellion Brazilian prison had ever heard of. Then, the PCC showed how powerful they were by taking control of 29 prisons for 26 hours in 19 different cities throughout the state of São Paulo. For a time the authorities and the populace feared that 30,000 inmates would state a huge and terrifying mass escape.
By Francesco Neves

Brazil never saw a prison riot like this and possibly no other country has seen it either. More than 27,000 mutinous inmates took 10,000 hostages, all of them people who were visiting the prisoners. It all started at noon on February 18, a Sunday. After 26 hours of tension and despair, which finished when the Military Police invaded the Carandiru Penitentiary in São Paulo, there were 19 dead prisoners, two of which were decapitated by their own colleagues.

Most of the dead were enemies of the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital—Capital's First Command), the jail Mafia that orchestrated the uprising. "Peace, Justice and Liberty", read the banners outside the windows of the rebelled prisons. They all came signed with a number: 1533. A little charade, since the P is the 15th letter of the alphabet and C is the third. 1533, therefore, spells: PCC.

Thanks to cellular phones allowed in the Carandiru prison by the guards—for a mere $300 paid to the warden any inmate can have a cell phone—the PCC leadership was able to get in touch with the movement's leaders in other prisons. In all, 29 facilities—there are 75 of them in the state—in 19 different cities took part in the mutiny, which was plotted in 10 days. Cells measuring 150 sq. ft that normally accommodate 10 people were transformed into rooms for 20 or 25, including children, sweethearts, wives, and parents of the inmates.

The rebellion started to be planned when authorities decided to transfer 10 inmates from Carandiru to other prisons. Notorious for their violence, those transferred belonged to the second echelon of the PCC and had been involved in the death of at least 10 companions. The PCC leadership, which was locked in the maximum-security sector of the prison, didn't like the news and decided to "turn the system upside down," as they put it. For a whole week the prisoners stocked food and even disposable diapers, knowing very well that there would be babies among the hostages.

Seven of the PCC leaders and founders were sent to jails in Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul, among them: Cezinha (Cesar Augusto Roriz Silva), Geleião (José Márcio Felício), and Marcola (Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho. Others, such as the Sombra (the Shadow, Idemir Carlos Ambrósio) and Edmir Vollete, were transferred to Taubaté's CRP (Centro de Readaptação Penitenciária—Center of Penitentiary Readaptation), a high-security institution.

The announcement that the action had begun came in the form of gun shots into the air. Other prisons joined in after receiving phone calls that the uprising had started. When the mutiny began in the Carandiru complex, word seemed to pass from mouth to mouth; food was shared; each pavilion had its own representatives; and with all cells open, prisoners and visitors could circulate freely inside the prison.

As the military police started the Carandiru takeover, the prisoners' wives made a barrier to prevent them from reaching the inmates. Some of the women were verbally offended, spanked and hit by rubber bullets. Alessandra Silva Santos, who was visiting her boyfriend, told what happened: "One of the inmates came in running and sent everyone to the patio. There, women and children joined hands in a cordon while their husbands remained seated on the floor. The police started to call us bitch. The prisoners responded by setting mattresses on fire. Then the lights were turned off and the police started to spank everybody. It was horrible."

Márcia de Souza tells that her right arm was broken during the police invasion. "A policeman," she revealed, "threw me against the wall and I fell on the floor. They ended up stepping on me."

The authorities were completely taken by surprise and at first didn't know what to do to counter such an organized and daring action. The rebels had a well-established communications network and possessed powerful fire weapons. Violating an unwritten rule, the prisoners didn't care about putting in risk their own relatives, including children who numbered about 1000. Any misstep from the authorities might have provoked an unthinkable tragedy. Luckily, the fear of a mass escape, which would result in thousands of prisoners out in the streets, didn't materialize.

A search throughout Carandiru and among its 7200 prisoners after the rebellion had been brought to an end netted 30 cellular phones, 200 cocaine bags, six revolvers and 376 stilettos. Pictures taken the day after the uprising had finished showed inmates on the windows, talking on their cellular phones—an item forbidden inside the prison.

For Túlio Kahn, researcher with the United Nation's Latin-American Institute for Prevention of Crime and Treatment of the Criminal, the PCC members themselves must have been surprised with the number of people that joined their rebellion. "In a large number of prisons there was adherence by contagion," said Kahn in an interview with O Estado. "The fact is that, to a certain extent, they put in risk the families of other prisoners and I don't know how these prisoners are going to react to this. This might damage the PCC. All in all, the rebellion was not a success for the rebels. The movement did not have the populace's sympathy and it can provoke a counter-reaction both from other prisoners, as well as from the authorities."

Kahn believes that many prisons joined the rebels in a domino effect: "The prisoners watch TV, read newspaper and listen to radio. I believe many of the other prisons joined in the revolt because of what was happening. But it's also necessary to recognize that there was some planning. You can see that by the fact that the mutiny happened at the same time in at least seven or eight prisons."

When the police came in with bombs, dogs and horses, there was panic outside and inside Carandiru. People feared a repetition of the 1992 Carandiru massacre. Outside the prison, women on their knees were heard crying: "I want my husband alive."

PCC who?

Who are these PCC people who so boldly took over the control of the São Paulo jail system? For prosecutor Gabriel Inellas, who probed the organization in 1999, this is a powerful prison Mafia that must be eradicated. His recommendations that a couple of prison authorities be investigated and that PCC's activities be stamped out were ignored, though. "Their power is in their external arm, which is formed by gangs of burglars and drug traffickers," says Inellas. "They control the whole state and have organization, power and communication capabilities."

According to the Federal Police, the PCC has been acting throughout the country not only by promoting the escape of prisoners from jail but also by financing big robberies against armored bank vehicles, banks and airports. A recent investigation by the Federal Police showed that members of the PCC were involved in all of the big robberies and that the group has started to lend its criminal experts to commit crimes in other states. In exchange for know-how, weapons, intelligence, and sometimes vehicles to carry out the actions, the organization charges at least 30 percent of the loot. It is believed they were behind an attack against a Vasp airplane. Says one police chief, "Nowadays, when there's a big robbery in Brazil, you can be sure that the PCC is behind it."

Besides robbery, sale of drugs and donations of "irmãos" (brothers) who contribute from the outside, the PCC also raises money by selling prison cells or barracos (shacks) as they call them. The transaction is made through corretores (brokers) who charge up to $500 for the sale of a unit. The rent is $100. The individual for-sale cells are located on Pavilion 4.

The authorities know about the scheme, but haven't done anything to stop it. Inmates without money may end up in an area called "security", the worst place in the prison, reserved for rapists and those who have been threatened with death by other prisoners. Relatives of the inmates revealed that 10 cells—one in each Carandiru pavilion—are kept empty during the whole year. The PCC leaders use them for meetings in which they not only discuss strategies but also charge and condemn to death traitors and other foes.

During the confrontation with the police force that invaded the Carandiru penitentiary, the PCC people were cornered into the prison's Pavilion 3 after taking dozens of prison workers as hostages. They also started several fires that ultimately led to the damage of more than 30 percent of the prison installations.

Not only has the PCC its own articulate statute with defined objectives, but the group had the 16 items of this document published in the Diário Oficial, the state daily which prints the acts of the government. The text was part of the conclusions reached by the Inquiry Parliamentary Commission on Prisons in 1997. At that time, the jail Mafia—which has "irmãos" (brothers, those initiated into the group) and "soldados" (soldiers, sympathizers)—had already threatened to shake São Paulo's prison system in order to change the way inmates were treated. In addition, it had plans to work jointly with Rio's Comando Vermelho (Red Command), another powerful organization of inmates.

According to the document, the PCC was born in response to the 1992 massacre of rebelled prisoners in the very same Carandiru Penitentiary. Then, 111 inmates were killed when the prison was stormed by the São Paulo military police. The statute's text says in part: "We need to remain united and organized to avoid the occurrence of a new massacre. We from the command are going to shake the system and force authorities to change this prison practice which is inhumane, filled with injustice, oppression, torture and massacres."

And the text continues: "Together with the Comando Vermelho (Rio's prison mafia) we will revolutionize the country from inside the prisons. Our armed arm will be the terror of the powerful, the oppressors and tyrants who use the Taubaté annex and Bangu I (jails of high security in which prisoners live in isolation) to fabricate monsters, as society's instrument of revenge." The final statement of the document reminds us of a motto used throughout the world by the left: "We know our strength and the strength of our powerful enemy, but we are prepared and united, and the people united will never be defeated."

Public Security secretary, Marco Vinicio Petrelluzzi, said the government would never negotiate with the PCC on how discipline should be carried on in the prisons: "Inmates, in the first place, need to have discipline. If they don't have it, they won't have other rights either."

Talking about "freedom, justice and peace" for the prisoners, the PCC text reads as the manifest of a political organization and the word "party" is used throughout the document. Item 7 talks about death for those "irmãos" who leave prison and won't help the ones who remain incarcerated: "He who is free and in good shape but who forgets to contribute to his brothers who are in prison, will be condemned to death without forgiveness." This rule has been taken seriously and according to prison data, dozens of inmates were killed upon returning to jail after being freed, or recaptured after an escape.

In a statement released over the cell phone to the media soon after the end of the rebellion, the PCC revealed its desire of being known not as criminal organization, but as a union. "We don't want to be known as a party of crime, but as the Union of the Marginalized and Condemned… All labor categories have their own union in order to make their rights respected." They have also vowed to change some of their violent methods while keeping others, since "the best defense is the attack". The statement also asks the government that prisons have no more than 500 inmates and that all prisoners be assured a private cell.

As if it were an immaculate organization, the PCC threatened to sue retired PM colonel, José Vicente da Silva, for having accused the group of robbing other prisoners and forcing visiting women to have sex with members of the organization. The statement admits that there were cases of sexual violence involving PCC people, but guarantees that "those people responsible for these atrocities were duly punished and expelled from the party."

Inevitable

While some people wondered how all this could have happened, others, more realistically, were commenting that it was sheer luck that it hadn't happened before. Others feared for the future. "This was just the beginning," warned the president of the State Penitentiary Agents Union, Nilson de Oliveira. "Something bigger is coming our way."

Instead of isolating the criminal some of Brazilian prisons have become a hub of criminal activity. Brazil's prison system has a maximum capacity for 170,000 people, but there are 230,000 inmates in jail right now. The conditions in police precincts are even worse. The homicide rate inside Brazilian prisons—1000 per 100,000 prisoners—is ten times larger than in the world's most violent regions.

In the year 2000, the prison population in São Paulo exploded. There were 25,000 new inmates. By comparison, Rio de Janeiro, which has the second largest prison population in Brazil, doesn't have more than 23,000 prisoners in its jails.

In São Paulo—and the story repeats itself throughout Brazil—inmates don't get soap, toothpaste or toilet paper. The shower is always cold, and they don't get clothes to put on—not even a uniform. Moreover, 30 percent of them don't have a mattress to sleep on. The construction of new facilities cannot keep pace with the number of prisoners, which is doubling every five years. To have enough room for all inmates the government would have to invest $2 billion a year, but it is spending only half of that.

The statewide riot coincided with a time in which the administration had been able to reduce crime mainly by the construction of new jails. During the Mário Covas administration (a PMDB governor who won his first 4-year term for office in 1995 and died from cancer on March 6), a record 24,000 prison vacancies were created in São Paulo, thanks to the construction of 22 new facilities, the hiring of 10,000 military policemen to work the streets and the purchase of cars, weapons and equipment for the police. During this period, there was a 10 percent increase in the number of criminals sent to jail annually. While in 1994 there were 55,021 people jailed in the state of São Paulo this number has increased to 92,552.

Despite the better numbers, crime rates in the state are still identical to those from countries dominated by drug trafficking, such as Bolivia and Colombia. In São Paulo city, for example, homicides had fallen 1.7 percent last year, leaving the state capital with a rate of 53 murders per 100,000 residents.

State governor, Geraldo Alckmin, admitted that there is organized crime inside São Paulo's prisons, but he denied that his government has lost control of the system. "We will not make concessions," he declared. "In reality, what happened was a response to the government's decision to disarticulate organized crime by transferring leaders from one prison to another."

For retired judge Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, former chief of Senad (Secretaria Nacional Anti-Drogas—Anti-Drugs National Secretariat) the only way to prevent the prison system from being dominated by a Mafia of criminals is to modify the whole system structure. "The first thing to do is to establish discipline and the duties of the inmate. Today, prisoners kill and rob inside the prison and nothing happens", he says. In the '80s, Maierovitch was one of the loudest voices opposing the creation of intimate visitation, which allows prisoners to have sex in jail. "I warned that prison would become a big motel for casual sex and I was not mistaken."

The American and European press all opened space to expose the São Paulo rebellion. London's BBC called the prison system in Brazil "the reinvention of hell"—using the expression from a national congress inquiry—and told readers that prison upraises had become an epidemic in the country. The New York Times reminded that international observers connected to human rights groups were closely monitoring the situation of the Brazilian prisons.

On March 5, the New York paper came back to the subject, writing: "The strength and discipline of the group, First City Command, has set off a nationwide debate about a problem many of Brazil's 170 million people would prefer to ignore. Some are calling for harsher treatment of prisoners, others for more humane policies, but nearly everyone agrees that the penal system confronts "problems of Amazonian proportions," as the daily Jornal do Brasil put it, and is on the verge of collapse."

Why?

For some experts the rebellion was a dramatic demonstration of the failure of a model that is more concerned about putting people in jail than preventing crimes from happening in the first place. For Túlio Khan, a researcher from Ilanud (Instituto Latino-Americano para Prevenção do Delito e Tratamento do Delinqüente—Latin-American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Delinquents) the approach to crime in Brazil should be changed. In an interview with Brasília's daily Correio Braziliense, Khan declared that "It's time to rethink the whole system, because to build prisons neither solves the security problem nor offers better chances for inmates to resocialize. The result of the government investments was insignificant to change the reality of public security in São Paulo. We need to look for new alternatives to punish and resocialize inmates."

In the days following the Carandiru rebellion, the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (Brazil's Bar Association), the São Paulo Conselho Regional de Psicologia (Regional Council of Psychology) and the Teotônio Villella Commission wrote a joint document asking the government to close down that penitentiary. For judge Walter Maierovich, it's time to implement a 1995 plan created by the state government, which among other things would privatize prisons: "The time has come to definitely face this question. We need to humanize prisons to fulfill its mission of resocializing criminals and at the same time impose a more severe regime to avoid that the inmates control the prisons."

For national secretary of Justice, Elizabeth Sussekind, the São Paulo rebellion could have been prevented if there were a network of spies in the jails. In an interview with Folha de São Paulo, she defended the creation of an intelligence service to act inside jails in every state. "Maybe we will need to infiltrate people inside prisons. We need to see the complexity of this vis-à-vis the law, however. It's possible that this cannot be done. The intelligence agents would pass information on breakouts, gang activity and would be able to find out about prison workers Mafia. Electronic instruments for monitoring might be used. A system like this is not only viable, but also indispensable. If we don't do this we'll continue to use weapons that are disproportional to the ones they have. These are not tamed, immobilized criminals; they continue to act as criminals inside the prison. We need to have ways to stop these time bombs."

Answering a question about how the rebellion is detrimental to Brazil's image overseas, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso concluded that "The most important thing is that such an action affects us. The biggest indignation is ours."

In his first response to the PCC two days after the rebellion, Nagashi Furukawa, secretary of São Paulo State's Penitentiary Administration, announced that all weekend visitations had been suspended. The measure, seen as a punishment, provoked even more unrest since some 30,000 visitors were being expected in the period that coincided with the extended Carnaval weekend, which starts Friday night and lasts until noon on Wednesday.

However, after meeting with representatives from the four cellular phone companies—Telesp Celular, Tess, BCP and Nextel—that serve São Paulo, Furukawa was not optimistic about the possibility of blocking the reception of cellular phone signals inside prison facilities. Since most of them are in urban areas, such a blocking would be very hard to implement. Preventing the entry of cellular phones should be more easily implemented if it weren't for all the help prisoners get from the personnel who work inside the jails.

Omission

While the crisis was still going on, the president of the São Paulo Prison System Workers Union, Nilson de Oliveira, informed that he knew about PCC's plans to kidnap prison workers and authorities in order to force the release of the group's leaders. He believes that the PCC is still strong inside the prisons and intends to use its armed militia outside the jail to intimidate authorities, judges, and politicians that would be executed in case their demands are not met. Oliveira has also threatened with a strike by the prison system workers to demand betters salaries and more job security.

`'The government," said Oliveira, "will continue to be unable to control the prisons for omission and lack of political will. The PCC is dangerous and they are going to counterattack. They have 12,000 members and they are decided to dominate and destroy the jails." In his opinion, the transfer of the movement's leaders from Carandiru to other jails was a bad move that will only serve to create new focus of rebellion inside the prison system.

And that's what has been happening for some time now. According to a Folha de São Paulo story, the PCC has leaders spread in eight states, due to a policy to send these inmates to out of state prisons to isolate them. They are in Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, Roraima, Ceará and Alagoas. It all seems to have started in 1997 after a rebellion in the Carandiru penitentiary. At that time, five leaders of the uprising were transferred to Paraná state.

Three years later, three of these men were accused of leading the longest prison insurgence Paraná had ever had. In response to the disturbance, the state's authorities sent 16 inmates to Alagoas, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Rondônia. In Mato Grosso do Sul, five prisoners with links to the PCC have being maintained in isolation to prevent a rebellion.

Lobbies

While many people are clamoring for changes in the security model adopted in São Paulo and throughout Brazil, there are those whose motto is: "the worse the better." Among them, the private security industry, which has been growing rapidly in recent years, thanks to the inefficiency of the state. Their operations range from supplying not only private security guards, but also bodyguards, bulletproof shielding for cars, surveillance equipment for houses and offices, as well as construction of gates and walls.

For Luis Antônio de Souza, researcher with USP's (University of São Paulo) Nucleus of Studies on Violence, the solution for the security problem is not that difficult and doesn't require large investments. Says he, "We need to increase the neighborhood watch programs and invest in other initiatives that would promote a better relationship between the police and the community."

Throughout the state of São Paulo the location of crime areas is quite predictable. While rich neighborhoods, found either close to the capital or in the interior, enjoy a low rate of crime often obtained through the use of private security, gates and alarms, the poorest areas have by far the largest indexes of homicide. Massacres—when three or more people are killed at the same time—are a phenomenon almost exclusively limited to the metropolitan area of São Paulo, which includes the capital and 38 cities around it. Ninety percent of the 90 massacres in the state last year occurred in that region.

By comparison, in middle-class and upper-middle-class neighborhoods like Moema, Perdizes, and Pinheiros, the number of homicides per 100,000 people is only three. In these neighborhoods the most common crimes are those against property like burglary and car theft. In 1999, there were 1.79 thousand cars stolen per 100,000 vehicles in the state of São Paulo. This total went up to 1.8 thousand last year. The situation is worse in the capital, where 2,310 cars per 100,000 were stolen in 1999, compared to 2,391 in the year 2000.

"The poor suburbs are an area abandoned by the public power," says Eduardo Brito, another researcher at USP's Nucleus of Studies on Violence. "Without schools, leisure areas, police stations and health clinics, the powerful outlaws end up becoming the bosses in the area." Without the presence of the police or the justice system, all kinds of violence, including homicide have become quite common in the poorest areas. A simple show of interest for a woman in a ballroom dance can provoke a fatal fight. "The consumption of alcohol and the possession of weapons also contribute a lot for this kind of justice by one's own hands," concludes Brito.

The others

While the PCC with its 1500 initiated members is the largest group of criminals in São Paulo, there are at least three other known gangs: Seita Satânica (Satanic Sect), CDL (Conselho Democrático da Liberdade—Freedom's Democratic Council), and CRBC (Comando Revolucionário Brasileiro da Criminalidade—Criminality's Brazilian Revolutionary Command). They are all rivals between themselves.

The CDL was created in 1996 in Avaré's (city in the interior of São Paulo) Penitentiary 1. It has 650 members and is active in five prisons. The CRBC command is in Sorocaba, another inland city. Formed in 1998 in Guarulhos, in the greater São Paulo, the CRBC was founded by a group that abandoned the PCC. Their two main leaders, Antônio Carlos dos Santos, nicknamed Bicho Feio (Ugly Beast) and Max Luis Gusmão, known as Dentinho (Little Tooth) were murdered by the PCC during the December upraise that destroyed the Taubaté's prison.

The PCC has also murdered six members from Seita Satânica in recent weeks, five of them during the latest uprising. According to Hugo Berni Neto, Sorocaba prison's director, "The CRBC inmates don't accept the practices of extortion, persecution and drug trafficking promoted by the PCC in the jails."

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