The new openings in the Brazilian prison system are one of the goals of the National Penitentiary Department (Depen), which is a body subordinate to the Ministry of Justice and Public Security. In this sense, 100,000 new prison spaces should be generated by next year.
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New vacancies in Brazil's prison system
The director of Depen, Tânia Fogaça, said in the program A voz do Brasil on the 28th of June that there is a need generation of new vacancies, as there is a deficit of approximately 150,000 vacancies in the Brazilian penitentiary system.
According to Fogaça, Depen's attributions are related to the generation of the National Penitentiary Fund, so that investments are made in the prison system, as well as the management of the five federal penitentiaries, and also the promotion of public policies related to the management area prison.
Regarding the National Penitentiary Fund, the director-general reported that national resources are transferred to states and state funds. In this way, a part can be used for the acquisition of equipment, such as vehicles, body scanner equipment, weapons, among others.
Overcrowding in Brazil's prison system
It is not news that Brazilian prisons suffer from a lack of sufficient spaces and that, often, cells are occupied with three times their capacity or more. In this sense, in 2021 there were 682,100 inmates in Brazil, but the capacity that year was for only 440,500.
In addition, this total does not take into account prisoners held in an open regime, nor those who were in jails at Civil Police stations. Therefore, if these people were also counted, the total would be approximately 750,000 prisoners in Brazil.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, this situation became even more chaotic, since there was no space for social isolation and detainees with the disease shared the same space with others without the virus.
Finally, new vacancies are really needed to cover the number of prisoners in the country, so that these people have their human rights guaranteed. After all, penitentiaries should function as a way to restore and reinsert people who have committed crimes into society.