According to the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD/UN), 40% of prisoners in Brazil have not been judged yet, they are temporary prisoners. Many of them would not be found guilty or would have alternative penalties if it wasn't for the Brazilian Judiciary system's inefficiency and lack of public defenders.
Actually, for the UN, the main reason for the overpopulated prisons in Brazil is the small offer of public defenders. A report from WDGA reveals that a public defender may work on 800 cases at the same time. The problem is that a lawyer here is treated like a luxury article, but every one should have access to them. The consequences of a broken penitentiary system are felt by us regularly.
Almost half of the inmates are in jail without even being found guilty. The prisons are crowded, dirty, not well maintained, and the people are not treated humanly, as seen on the video which caught correctional officers torturing inmates last year. Any one in this desperate situation, without legal means, authorities, or government to be protected, will search other alternatives that will allow their survival. The organized crime inside prisons offer these conditions that the Estate refuses to provide.
And all the violence that we inflict upon them returns to us in the form of attacks on buses and other terrorism acts.
Isn't it time for us to review the authoritarianism of our penitentiary system? And the justice, when will she be for every one?
Meanwhile, the governor of Maranhão, Roseana Sarney, explains that the violence there is because Maranhão is wealthier now.
