<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

Appendix A: Detention Centers Visited for this Report

Centro de Atendimento Intensivo-Belford Roxo (CAI-Baixada)

CAI-Baixada held 187 youths, sixty-seven more than its capacity of 120, when Human Rights Watch visited on July 28, 2003.  In an indication of the severity of overcrowding at the facility, we saw youths sleeping in the infirmary because there was no other place to put them.  Nine guards, one for every twenty youths, were on duty; they work one twenty-four-hour shift every three days.  In addition, the facility should have a psychologist, a social worker, and an educational specialist, but two of the three professional positions had been vacant for three months.  When we discussed the level of overcrowding at CAI-Baixada with Dr. Sérgio Novo, director general of DEGASE, he told us that the facility was overcrowded as a result of an effort to keep youths close their families.²⁵⁴

Compounding the problems of overcrowding and understaffing, CAI-Baxaida was in poor repair and did not have many essential supplies.  When we asked about food, for example, the staff member told us, “There’s a lack of basics here, of things like rice.”²⁵⁵

Unlike the other centers we visited, youths in CAI-Baixada are not separated by drug gang.  “Everyone is mixed together,” a volunteer told us.  “They’re in the same rooms.  They lose their identity” as a member of the gang, she said.²⁵⁶

Educandário Santo Expedito

Santo Expedito held 175 youths in seven dormitories when we visited it on July 30, 2003.  The center was originally designed as an adult prison and became a juvenile detention facility in 1999.  The infrastructure was decrepit, with exposed electrical outlets and holes in many of the roofs.  Several of the living areas of the facility were not used at the time of our visit because the walls and ceilings were in danger of collapse, detention center officials told us, meaning that its actual capacity was less than the 166 it was designed to house.  According to Dr. Sérgio Novo, funds had been allocated to renovate Santo Expedito into a “model” facility.  He was not able to tell us when construction would begin; when we spoke with him in July 2003 DEGASE had not yet opened bidding on the project.²⁵⁷

Educandário Santos Dumont

Santos Dumont is Rio de Janeiro’s only detention center for girls under the age of eighteen.  It held fifty-six girls on the day of our visit in July 2003, in excess of its capacity of forty detainees.  Sixteen were pretrial detainees; the others were serving sentences.  Some girls reported that they were hit by guards as punishment for talking back or failing to observe rules.  Several also told us that they were placed in isolation for up to one week for being caught with marijuana or for similar offenses.

The center was cleaner than most of the boys’ facilities, but it also offered girls fewer activities than some of the boys’ detention centers did.  Vocational training, for example, was not available at Santos Dumont.  (Marinete Laureano, the center’s director, told us that girls could receive vocational training in the nearby JoÃo Luis Alves detention center, but none of the girls we interviewed had been offered that option.)  The only outdoor recreational area was a small patio; in comparison, many of the boys’ facilities had one or more soccer fields and other spaces for recreation.

Four girls were pregnant at the time of our visit, and two others were nursing newborns.  The center did not have the staff to provide pre-natal health care to those who needed it, nor did it offer routine gynecological examinations to all girls.  Laureano told us that Santos Dumont would soon have a gynecological officer on staff.

Toothpaste, tampons, and medication were in particularly short supply, youths and staff told us.  “We do the best we can with what we have,” Laureano said.  “We need everything.”²⁵⁸

Escola JoÃo Luiz Alves

At the time of our visit in July 2003, sixty-six youths between the ages of twelve and sixteen were assigned to JoÃo Luiz Alves, a number well under its capacity of 120.  In addition to those youths, the facility was temporarily housing nineteen youths who had attempted to escape from Padre Severino earlier that month.  These youths were held in a separate wing of the facility, and detention center officials appeared to make efforts to keep them from coming into contact with the regular population.  Of all of the centers we visited, only JoÃo Luiz Alves routinely offered education to detained youths, and it had the best recreational facilities, including a swimming pool and a large gymnasium, both of which youths reported being able to use on a regular basis.

Marcelo F., a thirteen-year-old in JoÃo Luis Alves, told Human Rights Watch that youths are housed according to faction but participate in activities together during the day.²⁵⁹  When Human Rights Watch asked Peter da Costa, the detention center’s director, about the level of violence, he suggested that the center did not have a serious problem with violence.  “There are a lot of scuffles, but they’re kids’ things,” he said, although he conceded that fights were most likely to break out between members of rival factions.²⁶⁰  Nevertheless, in June 2002, press accounts reported that youths associated with the largest faction began a disturbance in which one boy from an opposing faction sustained stab wounds, four DEGASE agents were held hostage, and various youths were victims of excessive smoke inhalation in a fire that broke out during the disturbance.²⁶¹

Instituto Padre Severino

Designed to hold 165 youths, Padre Severino had a population of 225 on the day of Human Rights Watch’s visit, of whom approximately 90 percent of youths in detention were associated with the Comando Vermelho and the remaining 10 percent were affiliated with the Terceiro Comando.  Cells were filthy and overcrowded, and on the day of our visit several of the cells were flooded with water gushing from a burst pipe.  When the public prosecutor’s office conducted a surprise inspection in July 2003, prosecutors found thirteen youths confined in a cramped, windowless cell; the youths reported that they had been subjected to constant beatings.²⁶²  Although the center is classified as a pretrial facility, it held sentenced youths as well as those awaiting trial.    Because the facility is technically a pretrial detention facility intended to house youths for no more than forty-five days, it had limited recreational facilities.  It offered no classes, in violation of Brazilian law.