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VIII. Education

Brazilian law requires juvenile detention centers to provide “schooling and vocational training,” but few of the facilities visited by Human Rights Watch comply with this requirement.  Youths and their parents frequently identified education as one of the greatest needs of Rio de Janeiro’s juvenile detention system.  The mother of a sixteen-year-old in detention asked, “What are they doing to improve these kids?  Nothing.”    She emphasized the word.  “At Padre Severino, the kids mess up and return, mess up and return.  They’re creating bandits.”²²⁹

The failure to provide education and vocational training is of particular concern in light of the high level of youth participation in Rio de Janeiro’s drug trade.  Over one-third of youths arrested in the state are charged with drug offenses, including drug trafficking, according to data collected by the juvenile court.²³⁰  Youth involvement is increasing, and it begins at earlier ages, recent studies have concluded.²³¹  If Rio de Janeiro’s juvenile detention centers were fulfilling their “socio-educational” mission, they would make efforts to address youth involvement in drug trafficking by improving children’s access to education, providing them with vocational training, and working with employers to develop job programs to give them real alternatives to involvement in the drug trade.²³² 

Access to Schooling

In CAI-Baixada, Padre Severino, and Santo Expedito in particular, most youths did not attend classes.  “Education is a chaos,” said a volunteer who works in Rio de Janeiro’s detention centers.²³³  “Sometimes we have classes, and sometimes we don’t have them,” said Dário P., an eighteen-year-old in CAI-Baixada.²³⁴  Alfonso S., a CAI-Baixada detainee who was attending class, told us that only half of the detention center was in school, although he said that the others expected to start soon.²³⁵

Youths in Padre Severino gave similar accounts.  “They didn’t have classes” in Padre Severino, seventeen-year-old Agostinho M. told Human Rights Watch.  “I was enrolled in school before [I was detained], but there weren’t any classes in Padre Severino.”²³⁶  Peter da Costa was director of Padre Severino before assuming his current post as director of the JoÃo Luis Alves detention center in January 2003.  We asked him to compare the two facilities.  Conceding that Padre Severino did not offer schooling to youths in detention, he explained, “There . . . the situation with regard to education is more complicated because the boys remain there only forty-five days.”²³⁷

In Santo Expedito, youths and their parents reported mixed experiences with regard to schooling.  For instance, the mother of one boy in detention reported that he was not able to attend class.  “My son was always in school until he went into detention.  He couldn’t continue because he was detained,” she said, explaining that her son was not able to attend classes in Santo Expedito.²³⁸  But Luciano G. told us that of the thirty youths in his wing in Santo Expedito, only he and another boy were not attending school.  “I have to enroll still,” he said, explaining that the counselor had to help him do that.  He had been in Santo Expedito for thirty days at the time of our interview.²³⁹  Officials at Santo Expedito told us that they expected seventy of the 175 youths in detention to be in classes when school resumed the Monday after our visit,²⁴⁰ meaning that 60 percent of youths detained in the facility would not be enrolled in school.

Only JoÃo Luis Alves routinely offered classes to all youth in detention.  For example, Eric T., a fifteen-year-old in the fifth grade, told us that he attended classes in JoÃo Luis Alves from 8 to 11 a.m.  He told us that he had been to class earlier that morning.²⁴¹  The JoÃo Luis Alves center director, Peter da Costa, told Human Rights Watch that education in his detention center is provided by a state school.  “We have literacy classes and basic education through the eighth grade,” he said.  When we asked what they did for youths who entered in a higher grade, he replied, “It’s rare to see a boy here who’s in secondary school.”²⁴²

Vocational Training

In addition to formal education, juvenile detention centers in Brazil are also required to provide vocational training for youths in their charge.²⁴³  Parents and youths frequently identified such training as one of their top priorities.  When we asked Alfonso S. if there was anything he would like to change in the detention center, for example, he told us, “I would have activities for us—cooking, computers, electrical wiring, things like that.”²⁴⁴  Similarly, Carlos A., an eighteen-year-old in CAI-Baixada, recommended, “I’d have more courses on computers, mechanics, bread making, so that we don’t leave here without anything.”²⁴⁵

For many parents, the state’s failure to provide vocational training was bitterly disappointing.  “I had a vision that the [detention center] would give my son a skill,” one mother said.²⁴⁶  The grandmother of a youth in detention, referring to the “socio-educational” measures administered by the juvenile detention system, said, “Socio-educational—how is that?  It’s not.  That’s false.”²⁴⁷

Given the number of youths involved in Rio de Janeiro’s drug trade—over one-third of youths arrested in the state are charged with drug offenses, including drug trafficking²⁴⁸—the failure of detention centers to provide vocational training and other specialized programming is a missed opportunity.   The use of children under the age of eighteen “for the production and trafficking of drugs” and other illicit activities is unequivocally recognized as one of the worst forms of child labor,²⁴⁹ meaning that youth involvement in drug trafficking is both a juvenile justice issue and a child labor concern.  Strategies to reduce youth involvement in drug trafficking include improving children’s access to education, providing them with vocational training, and working with employers to develop job programs that give them real alternatives to involvement in the drug trade.²⁵⁰  Initiatives such as these are a ready fit with the rehabilitative purpose and “socio-educational” mission of the juvenile justice system.

The Right to Education

The right to education is set forth in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Protocol of San Salvador.  Each of these treaties specifies that primary education must be “compulsory and available free to all.”  Secondary education, including vocational education, must be “available and accessible to every child,” with the progressive introduction of free secondary education.²⁵¹   

International standards clarify that detention status is not a permissible basis for the denial of education to children.  As reaffirmed in the U.N. Rules for the Protection of Juveniles, youths do not lose their right to an education when they are confined.  “Every juvenile of compulsory school age” who is deprived of his or her liberty “has the right to an education suited to his or her needs and abilities,” education which should be “designed to prepare him or her for return to society.”²⁵²  The Beijing Rules call upon government officials to ensure that children deprived of their liberty “do not leave the institution at an educational disadvantage.”²⁵³