VZCZCXRO3001
PP RUEHRG
DE RUEHSO #0056/01 0391046
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 081046Z FEB 08
FM AMCONSUL SAO PAULO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7878
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SAO PAULO 000056 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR WHA/BSC, WHA/USOAS, WHA/PDA, INL, AND DRL 
DEPARTMENT ALSO FOR DS/IP/WHA, DS/IP/ITA, DS/T/ATA 
NSC FOR TOMASULO 
SOUTHCOM ALSO FOR POLAD 
USAID FOR LAC/AA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI KCRM SNAR ASEC BR
SUBJECT: POOR SAO PAULO PRISON CONDITIONS CONTINUE TO POSE SERIOUS 
HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS 
 
REF: A) 06 Sao Paulo 751 and previous; B) 07 Brasilia 2208; C) 07 
Sao Paulo 946 D) Sao Paulo 49 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED - PLEASE PROTECT ACCORDINGLY 
 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Although state authorities emphasize that they are working 
hard on introducing new plans to address deficiencies in Sao Paulo's 
penitentiaries, reputed to have Brazil's best-organized and well-run 
jails and detention centers, local prison watchers tell us that 
conditions are in an abysmal state with human rights violations a 
norm throughout the system.  With limited state supervision and 
little independent oversight, prisons are overpopulated with 
primitive sanitation.  Complaints of abuse are commonplace.  Critics 
have labeled the state's prison system as a network of "criminal 
storage facilities" that, without a post-incarceration 
rehabilitation program, has created a breeding ground for criminal 
organizations such as the First Capital Command (PCC).  Both human 
rights contacts and state officials agree that the situation 
desperately needs fixing but that it will take decades to bring 
about fundamental change.  End Summary. 
 
Penitentiary System Overview 
---------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) This cable is the first in a three-part series that will 
explore human rights concerns in Sao Paulo's penitentiary system, 
social and public security implications of the prison environments - 
including empowering the First Capital Command (PCC) criminal gang - 
and steps the state is taking in an attempt to improve prison 
conditions. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) State Secretariat for Public Security (SSP) Planning and 
Analysis Coordinator Tulio Kahn said that Sao Paulo State's prison 
population increased by 162.5 percent between 1994 and 2006, from 
55,021 to 144,430 and according to Father Waldir Silveira, Sao Paulo 
State Coordinator and National Vice President for the Pastoral 
Commission for the Incarcerated, a Catholic Church organization that 
attends prisoners, at the end of 2007, Sao Paulo State had 152,000 
prisoners.  The ratio of inmates to the general population more than 
doubled over the same period.  The SSP, which administers the state 
civil and military police as well as their detention centers, 
apprehends alleged lawbreakers and transfers them to the State 
Secretariat for Penitentiary Administration (SAP) system of 143 
 
SIPDIS 
prisons.  Both the SSP and SAP continue to face a barrage of 
criticism for not being able to handle the incarcerated population. 
The media regularly highlight allegations of prisoner abuse, 
unsanitary conditions and widespread corruption within the 
corrections system. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Many of our contacts told us that the greatest challenge 
facing Sao Paulo's penitentiary system is overcrowding.  According 
to SSP's Kahn, with crime growing at an increasingly fast rate, Sao 
Paulo State would have to build a new prison every month just to be 
able to keep up with the influx of inmates (see Ref A).  (Note: Some 
press reports from 2007 indicated that Sao Paulo's prisons were 
already 42,000 inmates over capacity and needed an additional 60 
facilities for 700 prisoners each to accommodate the existing prison 
population at the time.  End Note.)  Poor jail conditions have 
created new problems, including spurring the growth of organized 
crime, such as the deadly First Capital Command (PCC) network. 
While PCC revenue was previously concentrated in illegal activities 
within prisons, the gang has now expanded its activities outside of 
prisons, Kahn said.  Sao Paulo State Court of Appeals Criminal 
Division Justice Jose Damiao Pinheiro Machado Cogan complained that 
judges condemn criminals to jails knowing that the state will not be 
able to keep them in adequate facilities but are left with no 
choice; they cannot allow criminals to go free just because there is 
nowhere to put them.  Exacerbating the overcrowding problem is the 
 
SAO PAULO 00000056  002 OF 004 
 
 
fact that, because Sao Paulo State has the highest number of 
prisons, state authorities from throughout Brazil send their 
prisoners to Sao Paulo expecting the state to be able to incarcerate 
these offenders, Judge Cogan stated. 
 
Prison Conditions 
----------------- 
 
¶5.  (SBU) University of Sao Paulo Center for the Study of Violence 
(USP-NEV) Researcher Fernando Salla said that the number of 
incarcerated in Sao Paulo is consistently greater than allocated 
funds can support.  Sao Paulo's prisons - which Salla admitted are 
better organized and have better conditions than in other states - 
have a general standard of accepting approximately three times the 
number of prisoners they should individually hold.  In practice, 
some prisons are forced to hold up to ten times their capacity. 
State politicians and society at large are resistant to new 
regulations and more taxes aimed at improving prison conditions 
because of the public's acceptance that a poor jail environment is a 
just part of the criminal's punishment.  Salla labeled Sao Paulo's 
jails as "criminal storage facilities" because officials tend to 
focus their attention largely on preventing escape.  Since not 
enough guards are hired to patrol the interior, it is impossible to 
uphold order, discipline and work routines inside the prison walls. 
Criminal gangs therefore establish and enforce law and order within 
the jails and conduct reunions as a normal business would hold a 
board of executives meeting, he said. 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Father Silveira of the Catholic Church's Penitentiary 
Commission, complained that the dismal conditions in Sao Paulo's 
jails are an affront to today's concepts of the legal treatment of 
the incarcerated.  In addition to lack of hygiene (many prisoners 
have no soap or toothbrushes, and facilities have limited shower 
facilities), food and water are lacking and illnesses are common 
partly due to infestations of rats and insects.  Prisons do not have 
enough physicians or mental health staff, and legal assistance is 
minimal, he added.  Brazilian law requires criminal court judges, 
public security ministry representatives and certain other 
government officials with responsibility for the monitoring of 
prisons to visit the jails under their jurisdiction once a month, he 
stated, but this requirement is almost universally ignored.  These 
officials claim they fear for their safety, or, alternatively, that 
prison directors do not allow their visits, Silveira said. 
Prisoners are incarcerated far from their families, who are usually 
too poor to be able to travel the long distances to visit their 
jailed relatives.  Prison officials regularly abuse inmates through 
severe beatings or chaining them to the wall for extremely long 
hours - with full impunity - and deliberately place members of 
opposing gangs in the same cell, he asserted. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Of particular concern to human rights activists are the 
deplorable conditions at women's prisons, Silveira noted.  Five 
percent of Brazil's total incarcerated population is composed of 
female prisoners but facilities to house these women are severely 
lacking.  According to some studies, women are incarcerated with men 
because there is simply nowhere else to put them.  A recent case in 
Brazil's northern Para State, in which a 15-year-old girl was 
arrested on suspicion of petty theft and held in a cell with 34 male 
inmates sheds light on this issue (Ref B).  Father Silveira said 
that this type of incident is an accepted norm in many states, 
particularly in Mato Grosso do Sul, where neither the state's Human 
Rights Commission nor its Bar Association chapter even knew that 
state law required the position of prisoner ombudsman to exist until 
his organization made them aware.  Particularly worrisome cases are 
not just isolated to less-developed states.  Recent media reports 
focused on the Monte Mor Women's Prison near Campinas in Sao Paulo 
State where 119 female inmates were allegedly crammed into a rat, 
lice and insect-infested space designed for 12 people.  (Note: 
According to press reports, Sao Paulo State Governor Jose Serra 
ordered the transfer of 43 of the incarcerated women to other 
facilities; this figure, however, would still leave the prison with 
 
SAO PAULO 00000056  003 OF 004 
 
 
an overpopulation of 64 inmates.  End Note.) 
 
Staff Conditions 
---------------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU) The Sao Paulo State Prison System Employees Union 
(SIFUSPESP) is an organization that fights for the rights of the 
23,000 internal prison guards, 4,000 prison external perimeter 
guards and around 7,000 social workers, drivers, physicians, 
psychologists and administrative staff in the state penitentiary 
network.  According to SIFUSPESP President Joao Rinaldo Machado, 
while critics of the state prison system lament the abuses of prison 
staff directed at the incarcerated, the public often overlooks 
employees' rights.  Machado said that prison employees are underpaid 
and must work in a highly dangerous environment in which convicts 
bring in weapons and drugs and routinely threaten the lives of 
prison employees and their families. (Comment: According to a recent 
media story that SIFUSPESP President Machado verified, prison guards 
make approximately 1500 Reals or USD 857 per month, considered a 
middle-class salary in the city of Sao Paulo and an even more 
generous income in the interior of the state.  End Comment.) 
USP-NEV Researcher Salla added that the number of prison staff is 
too small to support the system.  State authorities have agreed to 
hire 600 additional prison guards in 2008, but this will not come 
close to the number needed to make a dent in the high 
prisoner-to-guard ratio. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) SIFUSPESP Secretary General Joao Alfredo de Oliveira 
stated emphatically that torture does not exist in Brazil and that 
prison guards do not abuse the incarcerated.  Oliveira stated that 
overpopulation - not the treatment of the incarcerated - is the main 
reason there are complaints regarding the prison system.  The State 
of Sao Paulo blames the federal government for not providing enough 
money to build new prisons and its own law enforcement personnel for 
being overly aggressive in attempting to apprehend even petty 
thieves and sending them to temporary detention centers to await 
trial.  While in temporary detention, these small-time criminals 
associate with members of criminal organizations within the prisons 
or temporary detention centers, join gangs and sometimes commit 
crimes more serious than the infraction for which they were detained 
in the first place.  Oliveira said that many of these criminals do 
not have to be in jail for as long as they are, but are not released 
due to bureaucratic delays and processing issues.  As the prisoner 
population grows, management decreases.  According to Oliveira, in 
1994 there was one guard for every 2.17 prisoners, but by 2007, the 
ratio was one guard per 6 incarcerated.  With guards barred from 
carrying rifles within the prison walls, they become easy and 
automatic targets for violent repercussions from the incarcerated. 
 
 
Public Defenders Weigh In 
------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Public Defender's Office Internal Affairs Director 
General Carlos Weis (a former IV), who heads Sao Paulo State's unit 
in charge of providing attorney representation for the indigent, 
said that until the state upholds its penal code, severe human 
rights violations will continue in the prison system.  Weis, who is 
a member of the Ministry of Justice's National Council on Criminal 
and Penitentiary Policy, a body responsible for analyzing, 
monitoring and formulating prison regulations throughout Brazil, 
highlighted that Sao Paulo State laws are written to guarantee 
prisoners' rights perfectly but are universally ignored.  Public 
defender Carmen Silvia de Moraes Barros, a member of Weis's team, 
said that Sao Paulo does not follow a clear strategy for improving 
prison conditions.  The state's focus continuously changes; reforms 
are haphazard and target only one or two prisons at a time; and new 
ideas are inconsistently incorporated to address problems.  Weis 
said the only overall positive step the state has taken in the past 
ten years is to build more prisons, but that this is not a 
systematic solution, he emphasized.  Barros noted that this has not 
 
SAO PAULO 00000056  004 OF 004 
 
 
solved the problem of prison overpopulation because so many of the 
accused are in temporary detention centers and even jails without 
even having gone to trial because of the backlog in court cases. 
According to Weis, Sao Paulo must invest more resources in the 
defense of the incarcerated, in health and education campaigns 
inside the prisons and in programs that will allow criminals to 
become constructive members of society when they leave prison. 
Based on the number of complaints he sees in his office, Weis 
believes that serious physical abuses including severe beatings are 
actually increasing within the state prisons.  Barros added that 
this is coupled with the chronic shortage of physicians and medical 
staff in Sao Paulo's prisons. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶11.  (SBU) Driving past the open lawns and shaded corners of the 
vast park that neighbors SAP headquarters in Sao Paulo's northern 
neighborhood of Santana, it is hard to believe that only six years 
ago, the notorious Carandiru Prison, at the time South America's 
largest, occupied the same plot.  Carandiru, where a riot on October 
2, 1992 led to intervention by the state military police that ended 
in the deaths of 111 prisoners, was emblematic of the type of prison 
that human rights groups, state authorities, the incarcerated and 
prison staff all regard as the ultimate nightmare.  If authorities 
believed that tearing down the prison would bring about a break with 
past practices, they were mistaken.  Only with a public that is 
truly focused on atrocious jail conditions, not just seasonally 
interested depending on a media story, will the state begin to 
address the issue. 
 
¶12.  (SBU) Comment continued.  With the anticipated signing of a 
bilateral Letter of Agreement on counter-narcotics and law 
enforcement cooperation, we may have the opportunity to work more 
closely with Sao Paulo State authorities on creating higher prison 
standards and better conditions.  In a January 28 meeting, Governor 
Serra told the Ambassador that state prisons are "very problematic" 
and he would be interested in U.S. expertise in prison 
administration (Ref D).  End Comment. 
 
¶13.  (U) Embassy Brasilia coordinated with and cleared this cable. 
 
WHITE