Human Rights in Latin America by Sonia Cardenas;Rebecca K. Root;

Author:Sonia Cardenas;Rebecca K. Root;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)

Yet it is urban violence for which Brazil is known around the world. In response to surging crime rates, two disturbing trends have emerged. First, death squads have been prevalent in Brazil, often targeting street children and other urban poor living in favelas (slums) as well as landless peasants in rural areas. These death squads are often linked to police or include off-duty police officers. Second, Brazil has been characterized by a notoriously high degree of institutionalized violence, especially by the police and in the prison system. Police respond regularly to crime and even minor altercations in urban slums with unrestrained abuse, often leading to summary killing. Corruption among police is also high.

Crime serves as a powerful rationale for police corruption and violence, which most often targets marginalized groups in the country’s urban and poor centers. Young black men are disproportionately victims of both violent crime and police violence. Criminal gangs carry out kidnappings and attack police officers, leading to a spiral of conflict. However, police respond with extrajudicial executions and torture. In 2016 alone, 61,619 Brazilians were killed. In Rio de Janeiro, on-duty police routinely kill more than 1,000 residents each year. The armed forces are increasingly deployed to carry out police work.6

Brazil’s police are known worldwide for their abusive practices, but reform is challenging. Thousands of police officers have participated in training courses, learning about human rights as well as crime-scene and investigatory procedures. International actors, from New Scotland Yard to the International Committee of the Red Cross, have helped train Brazil’s police forces. Reform has also involved creating special oversight agencies and review boards. While these have been generally positive developments, responding to violent crime with draconian measures seems overwhelming. The difficulties are magnified by the fact that Brazil has a federal system (consisting of a federal police system that works alongside civil and military police forces at the local level), which makes cohesive reform more cumbersome. More substantial change will require comprehensive reforms of domestic institutions, including the judiciary and even the private business sector. Without broader systemic change, it will be very difficult for political leaders and police forces to break the cycle of combating crime by sacrificing human rights.

The country’s prisons are among the most overcrowded, dangerous, and dismal in the world; and they include minors as detainees. Problems in the prison system are exemplified by the 1992 Carandiru massacre, in which military police used live ammunition to suppress a prison fight, killing 111 prisoners, many of them shot in the head. The event attracted global attention and became the subject of an acclaimed film. Prison violence is quite widespread, carried out by gangs inside the prison as well as by military police and prison guards.

Brazil has the third-largest prison population in the world after China and the United States. In 2016, some 726,700 prisoners were crowded into facilities built to accommodate half that number; about 40 percent of these prisoners were in pretrial detention, meaning that they had not yet been tried or convicted.

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