Brazil’s justice minister, Alexandre de Moraes, has pledged reforms to the country’s criminal justice system.

Brazilian Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes on Jan. 3 pledged to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system to address prison overcrowding in the wake of a prison riot in Amazonas state that left 56 dead, the largest riot of its kind in two decades. Within days, dozens more inmates were killed in prison riots in Roraima state, Manaus and Rio Grande do Norte state. What reforms are most needed for the country’s criminal justice system, and how should they be implemented? How will the Temer administration address the widespread violence and overcrowding in prisons, and is there enough popular and political will to allocate any new funding needed to do so?

Julita Lemgruber, coordinator of the Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship at the University Cândido Mendes and former director of the Rio de Janeiro state prison system: "Brazil has historically treated men and women deprived of their liberty in an inhumane, cruel and degrading manner. Not even during the 13 years of Workers’ Party government was there any attempt to significantly change this dramatic scenario. And what’s more, not even under former President Dilma Rousseff, a woman who had been a political prisoner during the military dictatorship, was there political will to improve prison conditions in any substantive way. So, why should anyone believe that under President Michel Temer, who is much more to the right in the political spectrum, things would be different? Furthermore, the plan of the present minister of justice is short-sighted and fails to deal with some structural issues. Brazil does not need more prisons. The criminal justice system is dysfunctional, and no matter how many new cells and spaces are created, they will soon be packed again if we continue to incarcerate thousands of men and women who should not be there in the first place. Last but not at all least, before building more prisons, we have to change our legislation in the area of drugs. The explosion in prison numbers in recent years is a direct result of a piece of legislation that came into effect in 2006, increasing the minimum penalties for drug dealing and opening space for judges and public prosecutors to criminalize young black men and women as drug dealers when it reads: judges should consider the personal and social circumstances to decide whether the accused is a dealer or user. If you are white, middle class and live in an affluent neighborhood, no matter what amount of illicit drugs you are carrying, you will never be thought of as a dealer. To be honest, the last part of this story is not very different in the United States of America, is it?"

Benjamin Lessing, assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago: "Brazil’s endemic prison crisis is boiling over into violence. The only silver lining is that the government, media and public can no longer ignore the problem. The danger is that officials will do more of what got Brazil into this mess: build more prisons and fill them with new convicts, while downplaying prison gangs’ dominance over prison life and their ability to parlay it into control over drug trafficking on the outside. As the PCC gang dominated first the prisons and then the urban periphery of São Paulo in the 1990s and early 2000s, the state government cracked down, expanding the prison population nearly eight-fold. This only strengthened the gang, which launched attacks in 2006 that paralyzed the city and forced official concessions. Since then, the PCC has expanded across Brazil, colonizing new drug markets from within state prisons, and confronting other gangs in the process. The scramble for territory led to skirmishes last year (which Moraes downplayed) in the same states that are now suffering a full-blown war. Standard prison-reform measures are insufficient. Even small investments could vastly improve the lives of prisoners, but this will not quell a gang war that has been brewing for a generation. Meanwhile, crackdowns and new prisons could strengthen the gangs. Brazil is in uncharted territory. Its prison gangs are the most sophisticated and powerful anywhere, capable of both orchestrating violence and reducing it through truces and homicide bans. Eliminating or even controlling these gangs is unrealistic; the only responsible policy option is for state governments to foster peace among them. This is both politically toxic and technically challenging; state governments may not be up to the task. In theory, federalizing the prison system could help. But federal politics is in crisis after Dilma’s impeachment: Temer is unpopular, and has neither political capital nor incentives to take responsibility for the prison mess. The only winner here will be Jair Messias Bolsonaro and his hardline ‘Bullet Caucus,’ whose call for a new Security Ministry was rejected by Temer. Now, if a gang war explodes across Brazil, it will fill the sails of his 2018 campaign."

Melvyn Levitsky, professor of international policy and practice at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and former U.S. ambassador to Brazil: "Prison life is never very nice, except perhaps in Scandinavia where prisons sometimes resemble resort hotels. We in the United States have had our own nasty experience with overcrowded prisons, and prison violence and riots that caused death and destruction. In Brazil, the prison violence issue has been exacerbated by uneven and sporadic attention to the problem. Every time a series of violent riots ensues, such as those in São Paulo in 2006, which quickly spread around the state and to other areas of the country, reforms at the state and federal levels have been promised. So, here we are again. The facts are these: 1) organized crime gangs control large areas of big cities in Brazil, and their tentacles reach into the prisons around the country; 2) as in some other countries in the region, gang members themselves often are able to organize and control their own lives and their prison conditions; 3) imprisoned members of gangs like the First Capital Command, the Red Command and the Family of the North continue to conduct their illegal drug trafficking and other business from prisons via cell phones, compromised guards and smuggled-in equipment; and 4) gang rivalry and competition for turf and markets and the violence that accompanies these struggles occurs inside as well as outside of prisons. What I believe is needed is a much more vigorous, comprehensive and thorough federal campaign against crime, especially organized crime involving drug trafficking. An important objective of this campaign would be to break the link between the gang members on the inside and on the outside of prisons. Building more and better jails, fixing overcrowding, training prison guards, blocking cell phones and the like are important steps, but they will only bring change if accompanied by an effectively implemented anti-crime campaign by a serious, committed government. I’m skeptical that the weakened Temer administration, beset by so many other problems, has the will and the capability to engage in such an effort."

Pien Metaal, project coordinator for Latin America drug law reform in the Drugs and Democracy Program at the Transnational Institute: "Brazil has the fourth-largest prison population in the world. It has seen a sharp increase in its incarceration rate over the last 15 years, comparable to the increase the United States had in the 1980s, almost tripling the amount of people incarcerated. The policies that have given rise to this situation are basically using criminal law to address pressing social problems, with a justice administration that is not only unsuitable to such end, but also incapable of managing the enormous amount of cases produced by the police and public prosecutors. The violence produced in the Amazonas prison, though triggered by disputes between competing drug trafficking organizations, is a logical consequence of the structural neglect by the state of its prisons and the people who inhabit these institutes. That prison had an occupancy level of 237 percent, and more than 60 percent of the inmates present were held in preventive custody, awaiting trial and sentencing. Just over one-third were men between 18 and 23 years of age, and the majority—as in all other Brazilian prisons—were black, uneducated and poor. Both prisons were likely to have had a high percentage of inmates held on drug trafficking charges, due to their location in the border regions with Peru and Colombia, and the inmates are probably all on the lower echelons of the trafficking chains. If the minister wants to address the prison situation, there is a lot that could be achieved by reforming Brazil’s drug laws, which now make the smallest couriers liable for long prison sentences. Priority of law enforcement agencies should be given to unraveling large trafficking organizations instead of going after the small fish. As a deterrent, criminal law clearly fails to miss its scope, and proportionality in sentences is the great unknown. Unfortunately, no such attitude or measures are politically viable with the current government."

Hari Seshasayee, Latin America analyst at the Confederation of Indian Industry: "The latest round of prison riots, leaving roughly 100 dead, reinforces the dire need for prison reform in Brazil. It is yet another wake-up call for a country where the prison population grows at 10 times the population’s growth rate. However, the National Plan of Public Security released by Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes is unlikely to reduce Brazil’s prison population, which is expected to reach almost two million by 2030. It is more likely to bolster a flawed security apparatus that deepens social and racial inequality and increases violence. Rather than promote the hackneyed tactic of rewarding more incarcerations and seizure of drugs, Brazil should focus on the simpler methods at its disposal. First, reduce pre-trial detentions. Almost 40 percent of Brazil’s prisoners are still awaiting trial. The enforcement of a variety of laws and constitutional provisions, including the Lei das Medidas Cautelares passed in 2011, can help reverse this trend. Second, avoid incarceration based on drug possession—one of the biggest failures of the ‘war on drugs.’ Many countries and territories, like Uruguay, and more than 16 U.S. states, have so far successfully decriminalized and even legalized possession of small quantities of minor drugs. Third, the government should work actively with Brazilian states to achieve the constitutionally mandated provision to establish a public defender agency in all counties by 2022. Public defenders are the only option for many Brazilians, since only a small fraction can afford private attorneys."

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