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II. Recommendations

Rio de Janeiro’s Department of Socio-Educational Action (Departmento Geral de Ações Sócio-Educativas, DEGASE), a branch of the state justice secretariat, has primary responsibility for the administration of the state’s juvenile detention system.  It should implement Brazil’s Statute of the Child and the Adolescent in a manner consistent with international juvenile justice standards.  In doing so, it should be informed by the recommendations of the National Council on the Rights of Children and Adolescents (Conselho Nacional dos Direitos da Criança e do Adolescente, CONANDA), the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.¹²

Brazil’s federal government provides much of the funding that enables states to maintain detention centers, hire guards and provide services to detained youths. Under a presidential action plan announced in December 2003, the federal government committed additional funding to expand states’ capacity to investigate and punish cases of torture, violence and other abuses in juvenile detention centers.  Many of the objectives of the action plan remained unfulfilled at this writing one year later.¹³

Human Rights Watch recommends that DEGASE and, as appropriate, other state and federal entities, take the following steps in order to protect the human rights of youths in the state’s juvenile detention system.

Pretrial Detention

Judges, DEGASE, police, public prosecutors, and the public defender’s office should ensure that youths are held in pretrial detention for no more than the forty-five days authorized by the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent, including any period of time spent in police lockups.  Time in police lockups should never be more than the five-day legal limit and should be strictly monitored to ensure respect for youths’ rights, including their right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

Disciplinary Practices

DEGASE should establish clear rules of behavior for youths in detention; these rules should specify the consequences of breaking each rule.  It should take the following specific measures to ensure that disciplinary practices are in conformity with international standards:

• Prohibit the use of disciplinary measures that involve closed or solitary confinement or any other punishment that may compromise the physical or mental health of the youth.
• Use cell confinement only when absolutely necessary for the protection of a youth.  Where necessary, it should be employed for the shortest possible period of time and subject to prompt and systematic review.
• Provide clear guidelines for detention center staff who impose discipline.

Complaint Mechanisms and Monitoring

DEGASE should establish a complaint system independent of guards.  All complaints should be investigated thoroughly.  Detention center staff who perpetrate violence should be appropriately disciplined and removed from duties that bring them in contact with youths.  Particularly serious cases should be referred to the prosecutor’s office and judicial authorities for investigation.  In addition, DEGASE should permit independent monitoring of detention conditions, either by nongovernmental organizations that promote the human rights of children or by community committees formed for this purpose.

DEGASE should also overhaul its recordkeeping systems to enable it to track allegations of abuse against particular guards and any disciplinary actions taken against them.  Accurate and complete employment history files can serve as a powerful deterrent to abuses as well as a useful management tool.

Prosecutorial Oversight

Consistent with their role in monitoring and protecting the rights of children and adolescents, public prosecutors in the child and youth section of the prosecutor’s office (Promotoria da Infância e da Juventude) should regularly inspect juvenile detention centers without notice.  They should meet with detention center directors to report deficiencies in detention conditions and should take appropriate action against directors who fail to remedy such deficiencies.  When they receive reports alleging that guards have committed abuses against youths in detention, they should investigate those reports and, where appropriate, bring charges against those found to be responsible.

Public Defenders

Public defenders play a vital role in assisting youths with their defense to charges of delinquency and in aiding them with complaints of abusive treatment or substandard detention conditions.  Adequate compensation and training are critical to enable public defenders to carry out their mission.  The state legislature should provide that public defenders be paid on par with public prosecutors.

Conditions of Confinement

DEGASE and other appropriate state authorities should ensure that conditions of confinement for youths meet all of the requirements of health, safety, and human dignity and comply with the requirements of the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent.  As a matter of priority, DEGASE should ensure that youths are housed separately according to their age, physical development, and severity of offense, as required by Brazilian law and international standards; young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one should be housed in separate detention centers or in separate sections of detention centers holding youths under the age of eighteen.  DEGASE and other authorities should guarantee youths’ rights to receive schooling and professional training, be treated with dignity and respect, receive visits on at least a weekly basis, and have access to items necessary for the maintenance of hygiene and personal cleanliness, as required by article 124 of the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent.  Because rehabilitation is served by regular contact with family members and the community, DEGASE should work with other state and nongovernmental institutions to provide external activities for appropriately screened youths, as authorized by article 121, section 1, of the statute.

Many detention facilities in Rio de Janeiro are overcrowded and in an extreme state of disrepair, with the result that they cannot offer conditions of health, safety, and dignity for youths in detention.  These facilities should be renovated or replaced.  In doing so, DEGASE should observe the following principles:

• Any new detention facilities should be designed for a maximum of forty youths, as recommended by CONANDA.
• New facilities should be “decentralized”; that is, located throughout the state in or near communities in which youths live rather than being clustered in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
• When existing facilities are renovated and new facilities built, living areas should be designed as small dormitories or bedrooms rather than cells, with sanitary facilities accessible from the living areas.
• Common areas should be provided that facilitate interaction among youths.  Areas for educational and rehabilitative programming should be available.

Health and Hygiene

DEGASE and the Secretariat of Health should take the following steps as a matter of priority to ensure basic conditions of health and hygiene for youths in detention:

• Conduct thorough medical examinations of all youths in the Escola Santo Expedito, the Instituto Padre Severino, and the CAI-Baixada detention center.
• Provide immediate treatment to all youths found to be infected with scabies and any other infectious diseases, with follow-up treatment as necessary.
• Wash all clothing, bedding, and towels in boiling water and follow the other steps outlined by DEGASE’s health unit to prevent a recurrence of the disease.
• Provide youths with sufficient soap and adequate opportunity to bathe.
• Provide every youth with his or her own mattress and bedding.
• Ensure that living areas and sanitary facilities are cleaned frequently enough to meet all requirements of health and human dignity.

DEGASE and the Secretariat of Health should also ensure that qualified medical professionals are available in each detention facility to attend to the health needs of youths.  Following the recommendation of the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, qualified medical professionals should examine every person upon entry to and exit from a place of detention.

In addition, qualified personnel should provide youths with information and instruction on the prevention and control of health concerns most relevant to adolescents, with special attention to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases and drug abuse.  In particular, all youths in detention should have access to HIV-related prevention information, education, voluntary testing and counseling, and means of prevention, including condoms.  Following international standards, HIV testing of youths in detention should only be performed with their specific informed consent, and pre- and post-testing counseling should be provided in all cases.

Education and Vocational Training

In accordance with Brazilian law and international standards, DEGASE and state educational authorities should provide every person held in a juvenile detention facility with an education suited to his or her needs and abilities and designed to prepare him or her for return to society and entry into the work force.  DEGASE should work with state educational authorities to ensure that education provided in juvenile detention centers is recognized by schools outside of the detention system so that youths may continue their education in regular schools once they have completed their sentences.

Drug Gangs

Over one-third of youths arrested in Rio de Janeiro state are charged with drug offenses, including drug trafficking. Detention centers should provide these youths with vocational training and other specialized programming to give them alternatives to the drug trade, in line with the rehabilitative purpose and “socio-educational” mission of the juvenile justice system.

Detention centers should take steps to break down the influence of drug gangs on detained youths.  In particular, those that automatically segregate youths by actual or perceived factional allegiance should consider gradually integrating youths on a pilot basis, giving due regard for institutional security.  As part of this effort, DEGASE should increase the number of staff assigned to units to be integrated, and it should offer those staff members additional specialized training on adolescent behavior management techniques.  As smaller, decentralized detention centers are opened, they should be integrated, following the model of the CAI-Baixada and JoÃo Luis Alves detention centers.

Girls in Detention

DEGASE should provide appropriate basic medical services for girls, including routine and timely gynecological examinations, and should provide prenatal care for girls who require it.  Vocational training should be available to girls in detention, as required by the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent.  Girls should have sufficient opportunities for recreation and exercise, including large-muscle exercise.

Data Collection

DEGASE should work with the juvenile court to gather accurate, comprehensive, and uniformly recorded statistics on youths charged in the juvenile court, the sentences they receive, and the detention centers to which they are assigned in order to understand the dimensions of juvenile offenses more fully.  These data should be available to the public in a form that fully respects the privacy of the youths concerned.  As an example of such an initiative, Rio de Janeiro authorities can look to the efforts by the state of Pernambuco’s Secretariat of Administration and Reform (Secretaria de AdministraçÃo e Reforma) through its InfoINFRA program to collect data for the national child and adolescent information system (Sistema de InformaçÃo para a Infância e Adolescência).

Federal Funding

The federal Special Secretariat of Human Rights (Secretaria Especial dos Direitos Humanos) should explicitly take international standards into account in directing federal funds to DEGASE and other states’ juvenile detention agencies.  It should dedicate a portion of these funds for training of juvenile detention staff on the relevant international standards, the Statute of the Child and the Adolescent, and strategies for dealing with youths in a manner that is appropriate and consistent with these standards.  As a condition of federal funding for the construction of new detention units or the renovation of existing facilities, the special secretariat should require that proposed construction or renovation meet the requirements of health and human dignity and the rehabilitative aim of residential treatment and take into account youths’ needs for privacy, sensory stimuli, opportunities for association with peers, and participation in sports, physical exercise, and leisure activities.