VI.  VIOLENCE AMONG YOUTHS

We did not hear many accounts of violence among youths, but some youths reported very serious acts of violence committed by other youths in detention.  In one facility, a girl bore scars on her face, neck, and arms that she attributed to a fight with another girl.  Elsewhere, a social worker with the local children's defense center told us that youths reported suffering sexual assaults and other acts of violence at the hands of other youths.  Such reports starkly illustrate the need to separate youths by age, physical maturity, severity of offense, and other factors-a requirement of Brazilian law that many detention centers observe only in part.

Many children we interviewed became markedly less forthcoming when we asked about violence among youths, quickly responding that they had no problems with other youths.  Others told us that the incidents they had seen were not serious.  Asked if there were fights in Aninga, Lucas G. said, "Not violent ones."[183]

Youths were more likely to discuss incidents that had taken place at other detention centers.  The Espaço Recomeço detention center "was horrible," said Henrique O., who spent two months in that facility before he came to the Centro Sócio-Educativo Masculino (CESEM).  "Here there's a very big space.  Here it's very different.  You spend all your time locked up there [in the Espaço Recomeço detention center], one person hitting another.  There are lots of fights there."[184]  Josefina S., temporarily housed in Amapá's pretrial detention center while the Aninga detention center was undergoing repairs, told us, "Aninga is a little heavier.  The prisoners go around hitting each other.  Here it's calmer.  There they go around making trouble, rebellion."[185]

When our researcher asked Josefina S. about several cuts on her arms, neck, and face, she told him that another girl had injured her in a fight the previous week.  "That's why I came here.  She did it because she was, I think she was drinking alcohol, smoking.  She cut me, she wanted to kill me.  She was put on confinement," she said.  "Sometimes that happens."[186]  We were able to verify that another girl had been placed on disciplinary cell confinement the previous week, but the officials we spoke with did not know the reasons for that punishment.

Loide Gomes, a social worker with the nongovernmental Marcos Passerini Center for the Defense of Children and Adolescents in São Luís, Maranhão, told us that older youths subject newcomers to violence as a form of initiation.  "There's a culture of 'reception'-on arrival, there's a little beating," she said.  "There's an internal code of discipline administered by the older detainees."[187]

Gomes also reported that she had heard of cases of sexual assault by youths against other youths.  "There have been cases of sexual violence, the strongest on the weakest," she said.  In addition, she told us that the most vulnerable detainees are made to undertake tasks that are considered to be women's work.  "Often the weakest are made to wash clothes for the strongest.  For example, somebody with mental impairments might be forced to take on this task and also be subjected to sexual violence."[188]  Nevertheless, Maranhão detention officials told us that there were no cases of sexual violence among youths.  "We've not had a case of one against another, not in this detention center," said José Asenção Fonseca, director of the Esperança Youth Center.[189]

In Maranhão, the Marcos Passerini Center reported that two youths died in March 1998, one as the result of burns and another from knife wounds.[190]  When we raised these cases with Dione Pereira, an official with the state Foundation for the Child and the Adolescent, she told us that there had been only one case of a youth killed by another detainee in 1998.  "It was an issue of rival gangs," she said.[191]  She told us that there have been no deaths in detention since that time.

Some officials acknowledged that acts of violence among youths occur, although they generally described such acts as infrequent.  "Fights aren't common, but they exist," said Maria Ribeiro, an official with the Foundation of the Child and the Adolescent in Amapá.  "We work a lot on this issue of respect, but we do have fights inside."[192]

Detention officials may never hear of most incidents of violence among youths.  Speaking of a fight he was in, Maurício A. said, "Nobody saw it.  I didn't tell anybody.  If you talk, it's worse for you."[193]

Separation by Age, Physical Maturity, and Severity of Offense

The incidents of violence we did hear of underscored the importance of separating youths by age, physical maturity, severity of offense, and other factors, as required by Brazilian law and international standards.[194]

Brazilian law allows youths to be held in juvenile detention centers up to the age of twenty-one.[195]  Some facilities held those who were eighteen and older in separate wings.  For example, officials in Amapá showed us a separate cellblock for adult detainees in Aninga.  Authorities in Maranhão and Amazônas described similar arrangements.  "There are three housing blocks," said Dione Pereira, referring to the Centro Esperança in São Luís.  "One is for the eighteen-year-olds."[196]

In addition, officials in Aninga appeared to make an effort to make cell assignments by age.  Seventeen-year-old Terence M. told us that he always shared his cell with a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old.[197]

In contrast, other facilities did not appear to separate either adult detainees from those under the age of eighteen or younger youths from older youths.  We saw no evidence of separation by age in the Espaço Recomeço in Pará, for example.  In Rondônia, while the Casa do Adolescente housed several older inmates in one dormitory together, nearly twenty youths of all ages were crowded together in the second dormitory and in a punishment cell.