Prison Life In Brazil

The quality of correctional and criminal justice system connections is the determining feature of each country’s level of economic and social development. The more controlled the correctional system, the more orderly the overall image of the country appears. In the United States, the long history of the penitentiary system has contributed in the improvement of legal principles of corrections and criminal justice: the prison life in the U.S. has lost its negative features, and a range of recovery and rehabilitation programs work to make prisoners “better people”. Brazilian correction systems are surrounded by an array of legal and human rights debates; in the current correction systems, the levels of safety and security leaves much to be desirable, while the absence of a well-built system of probation and rehabilitation considerably reduces ex-prisoners’ life chances of returning to “normal community” life.

Population

Presently the

“Overcrowding leading to waves of unrest, riots, and a major prison-building program has marked Brazilian prisons. Many cells rely on primitive sanitation, as Spartan as a pan on the floor in place of a toilet” (Roth, 2006). Many institutions serve only one meal a day, and cells usually have no beds. Beyond these technical issues, Brazil frequently disregards the incidence of rape and murder in state prisons (Roth, 2006). First-time offenders are often placed with more serious criminals, which lead to rape and discrimination against younger offenders. 651 inmates were killed during the first half of 2007; during riots, inmates burn themselves to death, kill and injure each other (Human Rights Watch, 2008) Lottery murdering is a widely-accepted form of relieving overcrowding in Brazilian prisons (Roth, 2008). The current 420,000 inmates exceed the system’s capacity by almost 200,000 prisoners (Human Rights Watch,