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Children in northern Brazil are routinely subjected to beatings by police and detained in centers that fail to safeguard their basic human rights. Once placed in juvenile detention centers, children may suffer further violence from other youths. They are often confined to their cells for lengthy periods of time, with potentially serious consequences for their emotional well-being. Many detained youths do not receive an education and are not offered other opportunities to develop the skills they will need to lead satisfying and productive lives as adults. Girls often lack basic medical care and have fewer opportunities than boys for exercise, recreation, and other activities. Conditions of confinement such as these violate international law and Brazil's Statute of the Child and the Adolescente (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente). Human Rights Watch visited seventeen detention facilities in five states-Amapá, Amazônas, Pará, and Rondônia in the Amazon region and Maranhão in the northeast-during a four-week period in April and May 2002. These facilities included seven that were exclusively for sentenced youths, one for youths sentenced to the lesser sanction of "semiliberty" (a measure that youths serve in facilities similar to halfway houses), one nonresidential facility for youths sentenced to probation (libertade assistida), and four pretrial detention centers. The remaining five facilities, including the four girls' detention centers we inspected, held youth under sentence as well as those in pretrial detention. Beatings at the hands of police during and after arrest are common, we found. Such abuses often occur at police stations, where Brazilian law allows children to be held for up to five days while they await transfer to a juvenile detention facility. In the state of Amazônas, for example, nearly every boy and girl we spoke with told us that he or she had been hit by police officers while in a local police station. In rural areas, where police routinely violate the five-day limit on detention in police lockups, children are at greater risk of abuse by police. Once these children are transferred to detention centers, they must often endure further violence from state military police. The state military police-which, despite their name, are subject to civilian control-ensure the external security of detention centers, quell riots and other disturbances, respond to escape attempts, and routinely conduct cell searches. Children who complained of beatings often told us that military police hit them with cassetetes, rubber batons with a metal core. "They use batons made of rubber," said Terence M., who had spent ten months in the Aninga detention center in the state of Amapá. "When they came in for searches, they would hit us." We were particularly troubled by the military police's actions in response to a disturbance on April 5 and 6, 2002, in the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará. Military police entered the facility after a small group of youths set fire to their mattresses and attempted to escape. According to official estimates, from four to nine detainees participated in the disturbance, which was contained to a wing that held nineteen youths; four of these youths escaped after they knocked a hole in one of the wing's walls and climbed a fence. The center called in military police shock troops, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets to quell the disturbance. One youth told Human Rights Watch that military police aimed tear gas cannisters directly at him; he had burns, blisters, bruises, and cuts over his face, neck, abdomen, arms, and legs. Other youths reported that police officers beat them with rubber batons and tree branches after they were detained. When Human Rights Watch visited on the morning of April 8, 2002, the first weekday after the incident, detention center personnel had already cleaned out much of the area, effectively preventing an independent investigation into the incident. When our representative returned to the center at the end of the week, the director of the detention center assured him that the military police had conducted their own investigation and had prepared a report. When we asked to see the report, he claimed not to have a copy. Many of the precise circumstances of this disturbance will never be known. But the severity of the injuries caused by the military police raise troubling questions about the actions of detention center officials and military police in response to a disturbance that involved a small number of youths and was confined to one area of the facility. International standards recommend that the use of force be limited to exceptional cases, where all other control methods have been exhausted and failed. Children also suffer violence at the hands of other youths. When Human Rights Watch interviewed Josefina S., held in the state of Amapá, she bore fresh cuts on her face, neck, and arms that she attributed to a fight with another girl. "She cut me, she wanted to kill me," she said. "Sometimes that happens." In the state of Maranhão, a social worker with the nongovernmental children's defense center told us that youths reported suffering sexual assaults and other acts of violence at the hands of other youth. And Henrique O., speaking of the two months he spent at the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará, said, "You spend all of your time locked up there, one person hitting another. There are lots of fights there." Such accounts starkly illustrate the need to protect children from violence by other detainees and to separate youth by age, physical maturity, severity of offense, and other factors-a requirement of Brazilian law that many detention centers observe only in part. Physical abuse is not the only human rights violation suffered by children in detention. Upon entering a detention facility, children are routinely confined to their cells for five days or more with no opportunity for exercise or other activity. Euphemistically described as a period of "observation," "orientation," "evaluation and integration," or in one detention center, "therapeutic confinement," cell confinement is rarely used for any of these purposes. In a comment typical of those we heard from youths, Henrique O. told us that the staff never came to see him during his first five days in the pretrial detention center in Pará. "You spend five days locked up, with the door bolted," he said. Iolanda D.'s description of her introduction to the girls' detention center in Pará was similar. "The first day I arrived, they searched me and then put me in confinement. I spent eighteen days there, in confinement, just me. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't leave. No classes, just to see the doctor. Classes were only afterward, not during confinement." Cell confinement is also used as the primary formal disciplinary measure. Human Rights Watch found that most detention centers have no clear standards or procedures for the use of cell confinement as a disciplinary measure, and there appear to be no limits on the length of time that children may be confined to their cells. In the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará, for example, we spoke to youths who had been held in cell confinement for more than two months. In the state of Amazônas, children reported that they had been placed in cell restriction for up to fifteen days. In contrast, detention facilities in the state of Amapá now limit disciplinary cell confinement to forty-eight hours. The distinction between confinement for "observation" and disciplinary confinement is often blurred, and youths and guards alike commonly used the same word, contenção, to describe both forms of cell confinement. Where children are housed during periods of cell confinement varies from center to center, with some placing children in punishment cells and others restricting children to their normal living quarters. Some children reported that they were completely isolated from other youths during this time. Others told us that they were confined in cells with other children. While in cell confinement, the activities that youths are permitted to take part in-and consequently the length of time they are physically out of their cells each day-varies widely. Cell confinement can have a serious adverse effect on a child's emotional well-being, particularly when he or she is confined for lengthy periods of time. "For me, the worst thing was being in isolation," reported Patrícia D., describing her time in the Aninga detention center in the state of Amapá. "I was very sad. I stayed there a long time, more than a month inside there without leaving or anything. . . . For me, that was the worst." International standards emphasize children's need for "sensory stimuli [and] opportunities for association with peers." Lengthy periods of cell confinement can inflict mental suffering on children, depriving them of the interaction with peers that they need to maintain their emotional well-being. In some cases, particularly when children are isolated or confined in close quarters for extended periods of time, cell confinement may constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, in violation of international law. Apart from these two types of cell confinement, children in most detention centers spend some part of each day in their cells, usually before or after meals. In some detention centers, these "lockdown" periods may last for several hours. As a result, idleness is a serious problem in many of the detention centers we visited, particularly the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará, the Aninga detention center in Amapá, the Raimundo Parente detention center in Amazônas, and the Casa do Adolescente, the boys' detention center in Rondônia. Children in each of these facilities told us that they spent significant portions of their day locked in their cells with nothing to do. Girls reported that they spent more time out of their cells than boys do, but they do not generally receive recreational opportunities on par with those afforded to boys. None of the girls' detention centers offered opportunities for them to play sports, the primary means of large-muscle exercise for youths in detention. They appeared to spend much of their recreation time sewing, engaged in other crafts, or asleep. With the exception of several facilities in the state of Pará, children generally reported that they were able to see visitors for two hours or more during one or two days each week. In Pará, youths in the boys' pretrial detention center and the Espaço Recomeço center told us that those in cell confinement had shortened visitation hours or were denied visitation rights altogether. Similarly, we heard that pretrial detainees in the girls' detention center in Pará could not receive visits. Facilities in the state of Amapá, in contrast, had particularly generous visitation policies, permitting family members to visit throughout the week. Most youths reported that they were provided with bedding and mattresses or hammocks on their arrival. But some youths in the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará and the Casa do Adolescente in Rondônia told us that they had slept on the floor without a mattress at some point during their time in detention. In addition, youth in the Espaço Recomeço center constistently reported problems with hygiene and access to water. The infrastructure of two detention centers was particularly inadequate. The Casa do Adolescente, the boys' detention center in Porto Velho, Rondônia, had two small dormitories and two cells for twenty-five youths. These physical limitations and the staff's practice of setting aside one of the dormitories for a privileged group of four or five meant that most youths were confined together in exceptionally close quarters. The Centro Sócio-Educativo Marise Mendes, the girls' detention center in Amazônas, had two dormitories for up to twenty-four girls in crowded conditions, leading to frequent conflicts. In response, staff often resorted to placing girls in the punishment cells in the center when they could not get along with others in the dormitories. The majority of youth in detention have only completed between one and four years of primary education. Many are illiterate. Access to schooling would be particularly beneficial for these youth. But many youths do not receive an education while they are in detention, in violation of the Brazilian Constitution and international law. In the pretrial detention unit and the Raimundo Parente detention center in Amazônas, no classes were offered at the time of our visit in April 2002. In other detention centers, such as the Espaço Recomeço detention center in Pará and the boys' detention center in Rondônia, we found that some children received schooling while others did not. In partcular, youths who were confined to their cells frequently reported that they could not attend classes. Every facility we visited offered basic medical services to children in detention, and most youths reported that they were able to see medical staff upon request. But youths do not always receive routine medical examinations on admission, and girls are not routinely offered gynecological examinations. In one case, a girl reported that she had not received prenatal care during her time in detention. Seven months pregnant at the time of our interview, Inês F. told us that she had not seen a doctor at all during a period of at least four weeks. Most detention centers fail to investigate complaints of abuses; indeed, most centers had no meaningful complaint mechanism. Officials in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazônas, were the only ones to raise the issue of abuses by guards and military police and discuss it forthrightly with Human Rights Watch. "I can't hide this," said Paulo Sampeio, the director of the Amazônas Department of the Child and the Adolescent, "because if I do, I perpetuate it." Brazilian law guarantees youths the right to legal representation, including free legal assistance for those in need, meaning that in theory, a child could ask his or her attorney for assistance in making a complaint. In practice, however, few of the youths we interviewed had actually spoken to their legal counsel. Nearly all were represented by the public defender's office. * * * This report is based on a four-week fact-finding mission in northern Brazil. Our researcher visited seventeen juvenile detention centers in the states of Amapá, Amazônas, Maranhão, Pará, and Rondônia. The facilities we visited included pretrial detention centers in each state and detention centers for girls in four of the five states. During these visits, our researcher conducted private interviews with forty-four youths, eight of them girls. Our researcher was able to take photographs in every facility. Most detention center officials asked only that we refrain from photographing the faces of children, as required by Brazilian law. The sole exception was in the Casa do Adolescente in Porto Velho, Rondônia, where an official told our researcher that the detention center rules forbade photographs. The circumstances suggest that the official invented this rule on the spot: He made this statement when our researcher began to photograph a particularly squalid punishment cell after taking dozens of photographs elsewhere in the center, and he refused to provide his full name to the researcher, identifying himself as "just Antônio."1 This is the sixteenth Human Rights Watch report on juvenile justice and the conditions of confinement for children. In the Americas, Human Rights Watch has investigated and reported on juvenile justice issues in Brazil, Guatemala, Jamaica, and the U.S. states of Colorado, Louisiana, Georgia, and Maryland. Elsewhere in the world, Human Rights Watch has documented detention conditions for children in Bulgaria, Egypt, India, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, and Turkey. Prisons, jails, police lockups, and other places of detention pose special research problems because detainees, especially children, are vulnerable to intimidation and retaliation. In the interests of accuracy and objectivity, Human Rights Watch bases its reporting on firsthand observation of detention conditions and direct interviews with detainees and officials. Following a set of self-imposed rules in conducting investigations, Human Rights Watch undertakes visits only when our researchers, not the authorities, can choose the institutions to be visited, when they can be confident that they will be allowed to talk privately with the detainees of their choice, and when they can gain access to the entire facility to be examined. These rules ensure that our investigators are not shown "model" detention centers, "model" inmates, or the most presentable parts of the facilities under investigation. In the rare cases in which entry on these terms is denied, Human Rights Watch may conduct its investigations on the basis of interviews with former detainees, relatives of detainees, lawyers, prison experts, and detention center staff, as well as a review of documentary evidence. As Human Rights Watch does when it works with other vulnerable groups, it takes particular care to ensure that interviews of children are confidential, conducted with sensitivity, and free from any actual or apparent outside influence. It does not print the names or other identifying information of the children in detention whom researchers interview. In this report, all children are given aliases to protect their privacy and safety. Human Rights Watch assesses the treatment of children according to international law, as set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; and other international human rights instruments. The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice, the U.N. Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty, and the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners provide authoritative guidance on the content of international obligations in detention settings. In this report, the word "child" refers to anyone under the age of eighteen, consistent with international standards.2 This use differs from the definition of "child" in Brazil's juvenile justice law, which makes a distinction between persons under the age of twelve (who are considered "children") and those between twelve and seventeen years of age ("adolescents").3 1 Human Rights Watch interview with "Antônio," detention center official, Casa do Adolescente, Porto Velho, Rondônia, April 24, 2002. 2 The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines as a child "every human being below the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted November 29, 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. Doc. A/RES/44/25 (entered into force September 2, 1990). Brazil ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child on September 25, 1990. 3 See Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, Law No. 8,069 of July 13, 1990, art. 2.
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