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IV. The Current Crisis

Today there are some six guards and about 207 adolescents.  The adequate number would be around thirty guards.  Right now the situation is impossible.¹⁵
—Guard at Educandário Santo Expedito, May 23, 2005.

Tomorrow there is no breakfast, no lunch.  And if a rebellion blows up, who’s responsible for it?  I am worried.  We already sent a letter to DEGASE explaining this, but nothing gets resolved over there.¹⁶
—Staff member at Educandário Santo Expedito, May 23, 2005.

The majority of Rio’s juvenile detention centers are under constant threat of violent rebellion.  This danger has grown in 2005, as state authorities failed to act quickly and decisively to resolve shortages in staffing, food, clothing, and other supplies and interruptions in schooling and other activities that have worsened since the start of the year.  Even before the current crisis, however, excessive use of cell confinement, inadequate staffing, lack of access to schooling, and idleness were routine features of Rio de Janeiro’s juvenile detention centers.

Acute Staffing Shortages

The number of guards and other staff in Rio de Janeiro’s juvenile detention centers is dangerously low.  Some centers commonly operate with one guard on duty for every thirty to forty youths.  In Santo Expedito on at least one occasion, a total of two guards worked the day shift at a time when the center held over 200 youths.

Staff shortages have adverse effects on institutional security, on employee morale, and on detention centers’ respect for youths’ rights.  Not all guards commit abusive acts.  But when they are forced to cope with a lack of personnel, even well-intentioned detention officials are tempted to cut corners—meting out discipline with blows and kicks, cutting off schooling and recreational activities, and confining youths to their cells for unreasonable periods of time.

Such shortages are not new.  When Human Rights Watch inspected Rio de Janeiro’s detention centers in July and August 2003, for example, Padre Severino had on average one guard for every thirty youths, an official there told us.¹⁷  CAI-Baixada had ten staff members, a number that included the driver and the porter, assigned to each shift to cover a population of 187 youths.¹⁸

Judge Guaraci de Campos Vianna, Rio’s chief juvenile court judge, told us in May 2005 that the juvenile detention system as a whole has always been understaffed.  A recent study by the judiciary found a deficiency of around 800 employees throughout the juvenile justice system, a number that includes those who administer community service, probation, and other less-restrictive  “socioeducational measures” as well as those who work in detention centers, Dr. Vianna told us.¹⁹  Human Rights Watch was not able to find out the total number of employees in the juvenile justice system, but Anderson Sanchez, spokesperson for the Penitentiary and Socio-Educational System Employees’ Union (Sindicato dos Servidores do Sistema Penitenciario e Sócio-Educativo), told us that DEGASE currently employs approximately 650 guards.  When we asked if it was likely that the deficiency of 800 was close to the total number of current employees, Sanchez replied, “That sounds about right,” saying that double the current number of employees was needed.²⁰

A judicial order at the end of December 2004 resulted in the summary dismissal of some 300 guards and other employees due to contractual irregularities, exacerbating the longstanding staff shortages.  State officials have been vague about the timetable for filling these positions.  In comments reported on March 14 in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper EXTRA, DEGASE director Sérgio Novo said that the department was in the process of hiring new personnel, but he said only that these positions would be filled sometime in 2005.²¹

The mass dismissal had a predictable effect.  On February 17, 2005, the director of Santo Expedito reported:

[T]he number of guards working each shift has proved to be insufficient in view of the far superior number of detained adolescents (163 detainees). . . .  The adolescents have observed the disproportionate number of detainees to staff, a fact that also places the security of this center at risk.²²

The ratio of youths to guards is now more than thirty to one at some centers.  On the day we visited Santo Expedito in May 2005, for example, there were six guards on duty for 207 youths, a youth-to-guard ratio of 34.5 to one.  On at least one day earlier in the month, the center had only two guards on its day shift, Simone de Souza of the public defender’s office told us.²³  When we asked a guard at Santo Expedito what a safe staffing level would be, he told us that at least thirty guards, one for every seven youths, should be on duty every shift.²⁴

Santo Expedito is not the only detention center with staffing shortages.  In response to an inquiry from the public defender’s office, the director of CAI-Baixada reported in January 2005 that his center had fifty-five guards.  Twenty-five more were needed, he said.²⁵  The director of Santos Dumont reported that her detention center required twelve additional guards to be adequately staffed.²⁶

Even before the mass dismissal, guards received insufficient training and support, as we noted in our December 2004 report.²⁷  A representative of the the Union for Employees of the State Secretariat of Justice of Rio de Janeiro told Human Rights Watch that new guards receive only a week of training before working.²⁸  “When a guard tries to increase his level of education, he runs into a lot of difficulties.  They [DEGASE officials] discourage this,” said Maria Helena Zamora, a professor with the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro who specializes in juvenile detention issues.  “Guards don’t receive assistance; on the contrary, their lives become more difficult.”²⁹  With the substantial reduction in staffing levels, guards now face additional pressures and are more unlikely to receive professional training and development.

Current staffing levels also increase the risks that come with routine transfers of youths from their cellblocks to classes, outdoor activities, and meals.  On the day that Santo Expedito had only two guards on duty, for instance, groups of up to ninety youths moved between the cellblocks and other parts of the detention center, Dr. Souza said.³⁰

In addition, staffing shortages mean that guards cannot be spared to transport youths to court.  Youths in Padre Severino have on occasion missed their hearings for this reason, the public defender’s office told us.³¹  Such shortages lead to violations of youths’ right to a trial without delay.  They also contribute to overcrowding in Padre Severino because most youths remain at that center only until their case is resolved.

Detention centers also lack a sufficient number of social workers, psychologists, and other professional staff responsible for preparing the six-month reports that guide judges in their decisions to modify sentences or order youths’ release.  These staff members can also provide critical support to detained youths.  Perhaps with these reasons in mind, CAI-Baixada’s director wrote in January 2005 that the center’s “real need” was a threefold increase in professional staff “so that the adolescent does not solely become a piece of paper.”³²  CAI-Baixada had four social workers and one psychologist for some 160 youths in late January 2005, a ratio of one to forty and one to 160 respectively.³³

Idleness and Cell Confinement

In response to staffing shortages, detention center authorities in Padre Severino and Santo Expedito suspended classes and sharply reduced other activities for youths in January 2005, meaning that they spend much of their time locked in their cells with nothing to do.  Classes at Santo Expedito did not resume until mid-May.  Enforced idleness was a longstanding problem in Padre Severino and other detention centers long before the current crisis, but the protracted lockdowns increased the risk of the centers erupting in violence.

Interruptions in Schooling, Vocational Training, and Other Activities

Authorities in Santo Expedito and Padre Severino suspended classes, recreation, and nearly all other activities at the beginning of January 2005, citing security concerns related to understaffing.³⁴  Classes were due to resume in Santo Expedito on February 21, 2005, but the center director wrote to the public defender’s office on that day to explain:

[W]e inform you that it was not possible to send Santo Expedito detainees to school on February 21, 2005, the date scheduled by the Secretariat of Education for the beginning of the school year, bearing in mind the current deficiencies in the number of guards [agentes de disciplina] . . . .³⁵

School remained closed at Santo Expedito until at least May 14, 2005.³⁶  Two vocational training courses, a pizza-making course and a microcomputer maintenance course, were also suspended at the center because “the teachers felt insecure due to the reduced numbers of employees.”³⁷  Interviewed in late May 2005, seventeen-year-old Anderson F. told us the only activities other than classes that were available at Santo Expedito were soccer, a bottle recycling program, and church services.³⁸

In Padre Severino, near-complete idleness has been the rule for much of 2004 and 2005.  André S., who left Padre Severino in May 2004 at age seventeen, told us that there were no activities there besides sports.  “At Padre, we would wake up, then we had breakfast, then we would stay waiting for lunch,” André S. recalled.  “We created a game with rocks.  We stayed watching the time pass.  [It was] like this until we slept.  There was nothing to do.” ³⁹  Marcos G. told us there were no activities at all in Padre Severino when he was there in December 2004, adding, “All we did was use the [athletic] court once in a while.”⁴⁰

In late January 2005, the director of Padre Severino wrote to the public defender’s office, “Currently we are not running any activity with the adolescents,” attributing the lack of activities to the school holiday and insecurity caused by understaffing.⁴¹  Schooling has since resumed at Padre Severino; other than classes, however, the only activity is occasional outdoor recreation.  Márcia Castro, a lawyer with the Bento Rubião Foundation Center for the Defense of Human Rights (Centro de Defesa dos Direitos Humanos Fundação Bento Rubião), told Human Rights Watch in May 2005, “At least now they play soccer once in a while.  Before, even that did not really happen.”⁴²

Similarly, detention officials in CAI-Baixada sharply cut back activities in January 2005.  As a result, the center’s director wrote, “Our concern at the moment lies in the idleness the adolescents find themselves in, which can result in negative reactions followed by internal conflicts and attitudes counter to order and discipline.”⁴³

Lengthy Periods of Lockdown

The suspension of schooling, vocational training, and other activities in Santo Expedito and Padre Severino meant that youths in those centers spent most of the first five months of 2005 locked in their cells with little or nothing to do.  In February 2005, Simone de Souza of the public defender’s office advised the State Council for the Defense of the Child and the Adolescent (Conselho Estadual de Defesa da Criança e do Adolescente) that youths in the two centers had been on lockdown, let out of their cells only for short periods each day, since the beginning of January.⁴⁴

Although schooling has resumed, we heard from youths that they continue to spend much of their time locked in their cells.  Asked how he spent a typical day in Santo Expedito, seventeen-year-old Marcos G. responded “In the wing really, inside the cell.  Only leave for breakfast, school, lunch, dinner, and once in a while soccer.”  Padre Severino was even worse, he said.  “There we would stay locked up the whole time. . . .  There was nothing to do.”⁴⁵

Shortages of Food and Clothing

At the same time that the mass dismissal has placed strains on staffing levels, food and clothing have been in short supply at several detention centers.  In Santo Expedito, the quantity of food available “has proved to be insufficient for the necessary daily consumption of adolescents and staff members,” the center’s director informed judicial authorities on February 16, 2005.⁴⁶  These food shortages had not been resolved by May 23, when a staff member complained to public defenders in the presence of Human Rights Watch representatives that there was no food for breakfast or lunch the following day.  The DEGASE general administration knew of the problem but had done nothing, the staff member said.⁴⁷

Food shortages are a problem in CAI-Baixada as well, according to a lawsuit filed by the public defender’s office.⁴⁸  We heard accounts that suggested the same was true in Padre Severino.  João T., a seventeen-year-old who was held in Padre Severino until May 2005, reported that the food had the taste of baking soda, an additive often used to induce a feeling of satiation with smaller amounts of food.⁴⁹  Hearing such accounts, Marcia Castro, a lawyer with the Bento Rubião Foundation, “That at least indicates that there isn’t enough food there.”⁵⁰

A member of the State Council for the Defense of the Child and the Adolescent raised the food shortage in Santo Expedito with a representative of Rio de Janeiro’s Secretariat for Childhood and Youth at an extraordinary meeting of the council on February 23, 2005.  In response, the Secretariat reported back to the public defender’s office the following week that secretariat records reflected normal food purchases for the period, a fact that suggests that the shortages were the result of internal distribution problems.⁵¹

Clothing is also in short supply at nearly every detention center.  In February 2005, the director of Santo Expedito wrote of the “need to obtain clothing materials for the detainees in quantities sufficient enough so that basic bodily hygiene is not compromised (aiming at frequent changing of clothing).”⁵²  Our interviews with youths indicate that clothing is not changed regularly at Santo Expedito and Padre Severino, as discussed below in the “Conditions of Detention” section.

The Riot That Never Happened

Youths in Santo Expedito rioted on March 28, 2005, after the center had operated for nearly three months with shortages of food and clothing, an extended suspension of schooling and other activities, and a sharp reduction in staffing levels.  The riot broke out after a failed escape attempt.  The police report obtained by Human Rights Watch notes at 2:15 in the morning a guard “heard some noises and saw that some minors were breaking a wall in the interior of the housing unit with the intention of escaping.”⁵³  Upon raising the alarm, the guard “entered into negotiations with the minors to try to end the riot.”⁵⁴

The director of Santo Expedito arrived after guards began talks with youths.  After “unsuccesful negotiation with the minors,” he ordered guards to enter the housing unit.⁵⁵  The guards then “entered and succeeded in stopping the illicit act of the minors.”⁵⁶  Seventeen youths, all of those in the police report list of persons involved in the escape attempt, were admitted to the Medico-Legal Institute (Instituto Médico Legal) hospital with injuries following the event.  No guard was reported as injured in the police record.⁵⁷

When a reporter called Santo Expedito to inquire about the riot, center staff denied that one had occurred.⁵⁸  The reporter eventually found a staff member who agreed to speak to her on condition of anonymity.  The staff member acknowledged that a riot had taken place and attributed it to the poor conditions in the center.⁵⁹

We asked Judge Vianna, the chief judge for the branch of the juvenile court with jurisdiction over juvenile detention, about the riot when we interviewed him in May 2005.  “There was no riot,” Judge Vianna replied.  “There was an escape attempt.  Where did you get this word ‘riot’?”  When we told him that the event was described as a riot in the police report, he responded, “Nobody sent me anything.”⁶⁰

Judge Vianna’s reaction is typical of the official response to this incident.  In the course of researching this report, we learned of other disturbances that were not reported publicly and, if Judge Vianna’s comments to us are any indication, have apparently never been investigated.  For example, we heard from a guard at Santo Expedito that youths rioted in late December 2004, during the week after Christmas.  The youths “broke everything” in their housing unit, a unit that has since been deactivated, the guard told us.⁶¹  The particular youths involved belonged to the Terceiro Comando, one of Rio de Janeiro’s minority drug factions, who were housed in a separate wing apart from the majority Comando Vermelho youths for security reasons.  Since the de-activation of the Terceiro Comando housing block, the two groups now dangerously inhabit the same wing, albeit in separate housing units.⁶²