Hell’s End

 Hell's End

“We are shutting down what can only be described
as an inferno. It has been a breeding ground of
lawlessness, organized crime groups and corruption.”
By


Elma-Lia Nascimento

Carandiru is no more. Carandiru became synonymous with unbridled state human right abuse,
after 1992, when 111 inmates of that São Paulo
prison were massacred by the military police that
were called to quell a riot. Ten years later, there
were music, clapping, and white balloons while the
last prisoner left the place.

During its 46-year existence the Casa de
Detenção (Detention House) Carandiru housed 170,000
men. Open on September 11, 1956, by governor
Jânio Quadros, who would be become Brazil’s president
in 1961, the penitentiary was designed to
accommodate 3250 alleged criminals who were still waiting for final judgment. During the
’80s, however, it became grossly overcrowded with 8000 all kinds of prisoners at a
time—even the most dangerous—and a population of 170,000 men over the years. In
2001, 100 prisoners escaped from Carandiru through a tunnel they built.

At the ceremony marking the closing of the prison, São Paulo state
governor Geraldo Alckmin didn’t shed any tears for the coming tear down of Latin
America’s largest jail: “It did not offer security, it was condemned on health grounds and there
was no rehabilitation of inmates. The model was backwards.”

Carandiru became again the center of world attention just last year when the leaders of a prison gang known
as ComandoVermelho, using cell phones, led from there a massive 27-hour rebellion involving 29 prisons from the
São Paulo jail system. The riot, which took place on a Sunday when inmates were being visited, involved 30,000
prisoners and 7,000 visitors—including many children—who were taken as hostages. There was no blood bath this time,
but the authorities decided to heed the warning: the prison’s situation was untenable.

Nagashi Furukawa, head of the State Prison Administration Department, recognized that his office had lost
control over the penitentiary: “We are shutting down what can only be described as an inferno. It has been a breeding
ground of lawlessness, organized crime groups and corruption where guards have no control over the inmates and
where rehabilitation is all but impossible.”

The prisoners were sent around the state to 11 new jails recently built at a cost of $40 million. State
authorities intend to use the space left after the demolition of the old prison to build a youth park with recreational and
educational facilities.

Send
your
comments to
Brazzil

You May Also Like

UN Praises Brazilian AIDS Program

The world director of the United Nations Joint Program for HIV/AIDS (Unaids), Peter Piot, ...

Bargain Hunters Descend Upon Brazil and Stocks Jump Up

Brazil and Latin America greatly improved Friday, October 21, as bargain hunters moved in. ...

Curitiba: The Real and the Fairy Tale

Curitiba has enjoyed an international reputation as Brazil’s point city for the twenty-first century. ...

Online Presidential Debate in Brazil Draws 50 Million

Less than two months before ballot day, October 3. three major candidates for the ...

Brazil Plans on Reducing the Greenhouse Effect Through Fertilizers

Brazilian researchers at the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Brazilian Farm Research Corporation ...

Brazil Teaches the US One or Two Things on Electronic Election

The president of Brazil’s Federal Electoral Court (TSE), Minister Carlos Velloso, the secretary of ...

Brazil’s Operation Cataracts Seizes 11 Million in Contraband

Operation Cataracts, which is being carried out on the Brazilian border with Paraguay, confiscated ...

A castor bean plantation in Brazil

Selling Biofuel to the Rich Is Just a New Phase of Brazil Colony

Recent research on the impact of fossil fuels has contributed to making the subject ...

Depressed with Brazil’s Loss Lula Wants to Skip World Cup Final in South Africa

It seems now that Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will not attend ...

Brazil’s Inequality: 1% of Richest Have as Much as 50% of Poorest

The 1.7 million wealthiest Brazilians, which correspond to 1% of the country’s population, have ...